Another Day, Part 14

(TO THE BEGINNING)

Security officers on a starship work in an environment that has more in common with Andy Griffith's Mayberry sheriff than most law enforcement types; while the ship is indeed leaping through the limitless cosmos -- or at least the Earth portion of the Hidden Frontier (less the worlds settled from France and China and, mostly, the two hardline ex-Soviet worlds) -- a starship between planetfalls amounts to a small town with no roads out. Additionally, Security answers to the Captain and ultimately to the Starship Company, not a Mayor and Town Council.

As a result, Security is more inclined to wait situations out and the officers are encouraged to apply logic and common sense instead of no-tolerance rules, to de-escalate instead of arrest, confrontation or other ways of bothering the Security Director. All of which goes to explain why there was not a lot of shouting and shoving; John stepped to one side of the opening through which he'd entered, saying, "Keep your hands where I can see 'em, Mister," adding, "--Alan, hang back," while keeping his attention on the seated man. "All right, whoever you are, we're going to take you out of here. 'S that a problem?"

"'Vill,' please, and I shall come along quietly. Do be careful of the urns."

"Stand up, slowly, hands in sight, do not move until I tell you; it's gonna be a lot easier getting back out if I don't have to cuff you - - Er, '...Urns?'"

"Surely Katrina has told you...? There was a procedure if it was found out."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Here's my procedure: my buddy will lead the way, I will follow him facing back at you and you will follow me, maintaining our present distance. Got it?"

Through this speech, Vill's expression had changed from one of bemused concern to genuine alarm and he replied, "Yes, but --"

"'But,' nothing. Unless there is an immediate hazard," John gave him a hard look and Vill shook his head, "keep it 'til we're out of here. When we get through that cargo can, you will turn to face it, hands behind you, and you will be handcuffed while we figure this out. Is that a problem?"

Vill shook his head again.

John called out, "Alan, we're movin'," then said more quietly, "Mister, come on. Slowly!"

Their intercom "radio" mikes had been on the whole time and when it comes to comms, Lupine and her sister ships are state-of-the-art: Good communications systems are a life and death matter for any critical ops. Usual operation is in "partyline," mode, in which every live mike is heard by every receiver on the system. So as soon as John set his prisoner in motion, T acknowledged and rearranged the rest of her crew. Alan stepped out and cleared the hatch, moving out of his fellows' lines of fire as John emerged, followed by Vill, who turned and was cuffed according to plan.

T gestured to her Auxes muzzles down, hold position and walked over to John, Alan and Vill, who immediately asked, "You're in charge here? Am I under arrest?"

"It amounts that. --What are you up to, anyway?"

"Didn't Katrina tell you already? Secrecy is moot at this point! The plan was, if either of us were caught--"

"Whoa, there. As far as I know, we haven't caught any Katrinas and all I know is what I see. So, once more: what's going on?"

His eye got very wide, then narrowed: "But-- You don't? The Eld- Um. No. I must not say more."

T was about as impressed as you'd expect, which would be not at all. "Fine, buddy. You're in a lot of trouble and you know it. Okay. Here's the fine print: You are being detained, presently charged with being in an area prohibited to passengers. There may be additional charges against you, of which you will be informed. You have certain rights and responsibilities, to which you agreed as a condition of your travel contract and of which you have already been informed. They may differ from those (if any) established on your planet of residence (if any), so pay attention. Anything you say or do will be recorded for our use. Your location will be monitored at all times and you may be confined if the Captain or his representative finds it necessary. You have right to representation of your choice of your choice as available on this ship and per provisions the Agreement of 1989 you may, for all except capital offenses, request deportation to your home planet or ship in lieu of hearing but you remain liable for any actual damage to this ship. You may not be held in secret. You have the right to know the offense or offenses with which you are charged within 24 hours of their being filed. Do you understand these rights and requirements, which do not include any that may additionally be imposed by your home planet or ship?"

He blinked. "Well, I-- Yes."

T smiled. "Good boy." She turned to Alan, "'Book 'im, Danno.'"

In her ear -- and all the other Security and Auxes -- Mike's muttered "Very funny," was all too clear. Security may make as many as five or six actual "arrests" a year and most of those are crewmembers, for whom the procedure is considerably simpler even after the Agreement came into force.

* * *

T didn't tell me all that at the time, of course; just the broad outline, ending with the arrest. A search of the container found very basic living quarters for one, showing evidence of a long stay by a female occupant, which ruled out Vill twice over. The urns, 378 of them, all but 26 marked with nine-digit numbers, proved to contain ash; Doc Poole took about ten seconds to pronounce it "likely human."

Mike and the Turk had watched the arrest and promptly turned their attention to an argument-discussion about access to the cargo bays and how a passenger had gotten in. Old as Lupine is. large as the ship is and as much as she's been modified since launch, the impromptu conference ended with both men poring over 3-D renderings and blaming one another for the inevitable lapses and overlooked maintenance accesses. Once past the hatches (far too many to suit Sheriff Mike) that separate "downtown" and the passenger accommodations from the working parts of the ship there are, for safety's sake, few barriers that cannot be easily gotten around.

By this point in our tale, it was my morning and, nerve-wrackingly, I'd been called up to Dr. Schmid's office along with the Chief, where things got even more interesting.

So I was sittin' in Dr. Schmid's compartment in Officer's Territory, passing up an offer of coffee and wonderin' what I had messed up. Vill, meanwhile, was taken to the Security office and processed in by Alan, John and the lone officer on duty there. After the whole thing blew up, he authorized releasing the statement he made at that time, so rather than try to paraphrase it, I'll just quote his own words:

"My name is Villem Braun and I am a citizen of Lyndon, resident of the town now called New Alamos. My family has farmed in this area since 1947 or '48, the chronology was a little scrambled; my maternal grandfather was a life-support technician, the life-support technician, on Glocke 38 and I am not ashamed of that. He never spoke of his life before landing, not around me. Of course, my earliest memories are after the Second wave landed, the ones who were abandoned by what you people call 'Far Edge.' The ones who landed didn't call themselves much of anything until the first elections, when they formed the Linden Unity Party . Yes, this is germane to my situation.

"I grew up in the chaos of history: the self-described First Government, when Star City was built to replace the original capital at Limetree, followed by the Panic and the Occupation, and the Second Government, the Rebellion of '63, the Re-establishment and-- but Lyndon's sad history is well-known. I never saw the worst of it. New Alamos is at edge of the coal fields, essential and far enough from Limetree and Star City to miss the mobs. There are farms enough nearby that, other than six months during '75, we never got hungry or had much trouble, at least not compared to Star City, Limetree or Pitty, not even in '73 when the People's Collective seized all the coal and tried to nationalize the mines. That was when Pitty burned and Pitty Under mine is burning still. I was away at Star City by then. I had managed to get a decent education and was working in civil service, trying to make things better and becoming increasingly skeptical of the Collective, when FCS -- the Far Edge -- first contacted me.

"'Federation of Concerned Spacemen' is still what the ruling body of the Far Edge calls themselves. They are often referred to as the Elders and the right word isn't "rule;" the settled planets that side of the line answer to no one and even among the starships, compliance with FCS is voluntary. Custom is, however, strong; unyielding Nature is their highest law and the lessons it teaches are indelible.

"Where was I? 1978 it was, over a decade before the Agreement. There was no official contact between any part of the Far Edge and the settlements that had followed. What we knew, what the governments of Earth at least some of them knew had been learned from people here on Lyndon and Blizzard when they were rediscovered, and from prisoners taken on Ganymede. Still rewards were posted for the original FCS members; by then the Unity people had come forward and been granted amnesty, mostly. Abductions and 'cattle mutilations' were still happening on Earth and even Kansas II. I suppose even Lyndon. So any such contact was...unapproved. Risky.

"And so what? By then even my Post Office job was risky. It was the one good thing we had and People's Commissioners here and Gauleiters there were interfering, opening mail, stopping our carriers, cutting phone lines. What worse harm could come from listening to these shy outsiders?

"The answer was and still is 'None,' I think. I was soon passing minor bits of information to them and inserting messages untraceably into the mails. Things got worse before they got better but improve they did; within five years, the Unity/Social Democrat coalition had ousted both the Collective and the "Sixth Reich" in the hills and even kept the old capital at Limetree from being destroyed. Some criticize the accomplishments of our coalition government but for fifteen years, right until the money collapsed, it was the best my home ever had.

"Like many of us, in the economic troubles I lost everything I had saved for retirement. My involvement with FCS had dwindled after Agreement '89, of course (have I mentioned I am almost certain I carried The Roglaski Letter that started all that?) but I was still in touch; when they contacted me this past September with an unusual request, an unusually _well-paying_ request, I was ready to help. When my own government -- yes, we do still have one, powerless and impoverished though it is -- quietly made it an order, there was no other honorable path.

"...You know of the 1989 Agreement. No one missed the end of worrying that Earth or the Far Side would attack each other. But you may not know of items left unsettled. The most important to the FCS was, their founding leaders were not given amnesty. Your own United States government and their NATO allies refused to consider pardoning the men who stole their Lunar missile base. Ready though they were to forgive their children and grandchildren and so on, ready though they were to ignore the furtive..."borrowings" of genetic material and technology as long as they came to an end, that one thing remained unresolved.

"By last Summer, time had itself solved the problem: the last member of the original conspiracy passed away. They had long wished return home and the current FCS leadership was determined that they should. The increasing amount of cargo shipped between the Far Edge and Earth-based worlds made it simple enough; rather than risk breaching the Agreement by making direct contact, they smuggled the cremated remains of their founders to Blizzard, had their agents assemble it into a series of standard containers with a few...changes and consigned it to Earth. It ended up aboard your vessel, with a 'Space Marine' to stand watch and ensure proper dispersal of the ash upon arrival. Unbeknownst to me, some of the oldest members of the Social Democrats had intelligence of this effort and to it, wished to add the remains of some of our own First and Second groups of settlers. Yes, yes, even the First. Some of them were evil men but they are now dead, dead after privation and risk and even bravery and it is time they went home; and maybe their ilk will bother my world less once they have.

"I digress. Too much history, too many dashed hopes. When your Lupine took the container and half-dozen others, all seemed settled; when you filed new course plans on departure, adding this excursion across the Line to Frothup, there was great consternation. Even now, there is not much trust. What if their cargo was suspected? What if our addition was? And so I found myself, um, activated, revealed, retired, briefed, suddenly on the inside of events within my own government and the Far Edge, helping the Social Democrats -- I have always been a Unity member, all my life -- and prepared to leave the planet. They even had a cover; the, um, facilitator -- and covert observer -- of a touring Edger had fallen ill and I was to take his place. Of course, the "tourist" was George Welles. FCS has a great horror of popular movements of any sort and I have the impression anything resembling a new religion is watched with great care.

"How it was all arranged is mere detail; I will of course outline how I evaded your security systems -- I was provided with the keycard you have taken from me, I do not know how your codes were breached. I boarded, the remains of our First came with other cargo and once the ship was underway, I made contact with Katrina.

"And of Katrina, is she not in your custody as well?"

Sometimes things are simple; Vill identified our mystery corpse from photographs as the missing Katrina -- "Hulinsky, I think."* It didn't help explaining why or exactly how she was killed and if you're not thinking Vill wasn't first-and-only on the list of likely suspects, you haven't been paying attention.

* * *
Meanwhile, up in officer's territory (I said I'd get back to it), all hushed voices and fancy carpet, Dr. Schmid was taking an interminably long time to get to the point. Coffee service was cooling on a corner of his desk, the Chief was sipping from a tiny porcelain cup that looked incongruous in his hand, and the 2/O himself was averring his enthusiasm for our modern age.

(TO BE CONTINUED)
_____________________________-
* With a long u, as if it were spelled "Hoolinsky."

Another Day, Part 13

The tale of the inadvertently-crashed card game was good gossip and a good catch for Ivan's guys -- shippers pay us, trust us, darn it, to take proper care of their goods -- but hardly cause for murder and I said as much to T.

She rubbed her palms together, grinned as happily as a child, chortled, "Oh, wait 'til I tell you the rest," and started to relate her side of the lurker sweep.

From here on out, I'll tell T's story as I figured it out later; it'll get too confusing if I stick to only what she or I knew at the time.

Her team's first hit turned out to be a still. (It never fails. The Lupine has no shortage of places to buy all grades of alcohol and yet just like every starship of sufficient size and most of the sublight haulers, too, there is always some crewman who's just got to build a still). They noted it for surveillance and moved on. Another of her teams carefully worked its way up on...a trysting couple. On the clock. But at least they were married, though not to one another. Handed them over to their supervisor; The Starship Company doesn't much care who you sleep with but frowns on so doing on company time. Other possibilities turned out to be false alarms, though one did give Stores & Cargo advance notice of a small chemical leak. It was after that that things started to get interesting and T left the S&C office Mike had borrowed to join her lead team, hanging a little wide-angle pin-camera on her tunic pocket as she left. (I once asked, "What's that badge for?" only to be told, "Watching!" Ah, Security humor).

Of all the shirtsleeve-environment sections of the Lupine, the main cargo bays may be the most foreign to everyday experience, unless you work in a Zeppelin hangar. When the ship was new (long before the present "downtown" and "grand hotel" additions at the bow and upper side), the vast bays at Port and Starboard were hangar decks, where fighters were serviced and large drop-shuttles (replaced many years ago by the squirt-booster(s)strapped to cargo containers method) were stored; the former flight decks, outboard, were the nucleus of our present squirt-booster and ROV bays. Inboard of the five-story-high ex-hangars, the original holds are still in use for smaller items. The battle-ready (though never battle-tested) original configuration called for huge, pressure-rated hatches every 200 feet; these days, every other one is left open and "escape pod" safety refuges are spotted along the bulkheads and down the center line. Pressure suits are still required during cargo ops, when hatches at each end open to vacuum and the first two interior hatches are used as a cargo airlock.

These, least visited in-flight of any holds, were the areas T's teams had started on, using Stores & Cargo's IR-capable monitoring cameras to find the most likely containers. Their first hits were in the more-accessible sections and the process became more difficult as they got deeper and deeper in on each side. The big bays are almost exclusively used for containerized cargo which the shipper has paid a premium to have carried in a controlled environment; the containers are briefly exposed to zero pressure and temperature extremes when loaded aboard and when offloaded at the destination, but for many cargoes, it's an acceptable trade-off. Shippers can spend even more and never have their orchids, prize poodle, high-precision CNC machine or whatever at risk of exposure to heat, cold or vacuum but most don't. In the big holds, the containers are shoved and stacked by the same system Space Force used to move their small fighters, scouts and transports, a powered flatcar system flush with the deck and traveling cranes in each section. Take the fully-loaded deck of a big ocean-going container ship and set it in a huge tunnel, then add the hooks, haulers and other hazards of a cargo port and you'll begin to have an idea. It's a lot more cluttered than the Lupine's version of "deck cargo," racked in vacuum, and much harder to search with IR and chemical sniffers. When T's Security and Aux teams get even a faint hit, they check it out, sometimes having to stand back as Stores and Cargo unstacks and shifts containers to dig down for close examination.

"Hit" number four was looking to go that way but a particularly eager Aux took it on himself to walk the perimeter of the stack and found a container that appeared shut and locked but wasn't, exactly. This came a little after Ivan and company found the card game, so there were a few jokes about bustin' up another as they sorted themselves out and T, already close by from setting cameras on the still (and taking bets the would-be distiller would get word and never return) jogged over to get a first-hand look.

It was neatly done; the usual external latch appeared shut and had the opening not been left ever so slightly ajar there would have been no reason to suspect the container was anything out of the ordinary. There it was, a stenciled rectangular logo for an outfit none of them had ever heard of, "Star Azure." Except it was standing ever so slightly proud of the surface: a concealed hatch. "We got very quiet," T told me. And she sent one of her regulars to place a spare camera at the opening, with a thread-sized fiber-optic lens just barely protruding over the edge. Softly, softly.... Her hand held security monitor showed nothing much except more light than expected and vague shapes. Mike, with big displays in his borrowed command center, described close-stacked pallets sheathed in opaque plastic with barely room to squeeze past and a faint light shining from the far end. After ten minutes without so much as a flicker, T told her boss she was going in, gestured her team to gather and set them for action in whispers.

"John S., Alan--" (the tallest of that pair barely comes up to her shoulders but it's all muscle and plenty quick) "You're going in. There's no room for a dynamic entry and Ivan's the expert on that anyway. Take it slow and don't get fancy. The rest of us will be staged in several locations, ready to cover if you have to back out -- Matt and Abby, down there, the Auxiliaries right here. Clear?" Nods all around. "Do it." They all started to move and she caught the entry team's attention "Wait for my signal. And guys?" John and Alan looked at her expectantly. "Don't get killed."

Alan grinned; John S. just rolled his eyes and catfooted towards the visible end of the cargo container. Alan caught up and at T's gesture, eased open the hidden hatch. Jon drew his sidearm and stepped through. Alan unholstered and, after miming a silent three-count, followed.

* * *
In the temporary command center, Sheriff Mike was being reminded yet again that Stores & Cargo's proud boast of knowing the exact whereabouts of every item entrusted to their care was located was not the same as their knowing the identity of every item in the holds and external storage; the holds are just too vast and the riggers and remote-drone operators who make up the bulk of the S&C cargo-handling staff are focused on maximum stowage with minimum damage to persons and goods. To make matters worse, he was trying to follow T's crew in the monitors and to entirely confound that effort, he was being reminded by S&C's most colorful watch supervisor and one of his longtime Persons Of Interest, Cargomaster Turon, better known as the Turk.

My pal and occasional date Stephen the Navigator points out that the Turk is the Lupine's most dependable source of fresh flowers, that he is the ship's only arms dealer and cheapest ammunition source (except when he's in dutch with Mike and it's been confiscated again) and that his most visible sideline business, a collection of cheap (but sturdy enough to be shipped in vacuum) carnival rides he inevitably manages to get squirt-boostered to and from planetside at the lowest possible rates and has set up and operated by a few of his impressive and mysterious assortment of local contacts during our longer stops, brings joy to children throughout the Hidden Frontier. Not even Stephan can offer cogent comment on the Turk's laser hair removal or claimed camel-rental enterprise on Kansas II beyond, "It must be a needed service." The Turk is, to put it mildly, a go-getter, though going where and getting precisely what (let alone how much) can be a matter for heated debate and/or legal scrutiny. Claiming to hail from "the least known of the 'stans," his backstory is as obscure as most of his business dealings. All that said, he's a dazzlingly effective cargomaster; crews on his watch are among the fastest and safest at the high-risk transferring and stowing freight not just on Lupine but anywhere, though I suppose the highly-automated systems found among the Far Edged are nominally less risky. His honesty, under the strict scrutiny of the Starship Company, has been proven (in administrative hearings!) to be punctilious if a bit more concerned with the letter than the intent. In short, the Turk is...a headache. A highly-skilled headache. He was at his obfuscatively-helpful best with Mike most of the time and this night was no exception. His accent is mild but indescribable, so you're on your own.

"I am telling you, eff— Sir, we have no record of that container; the stack it is in... It should not be that height. I am offended by it. Offended!"

Mike expressed doubt with narrowed eyes and started to ask, "This isn't one of your--"

"Offended and insulted! And misjudged! Do I look like one who would pay inside rates?"

"Don't make me describe your looks, Cargomaster. Also, I don't care. How'd that container get where it is? Did it crawl in when we were between stars?"

The Turk contrived to look innocently saintly and failed, managing an expression between puppyish and hangdog. "It is unknown to me. Another shift's work, perhaps? Could it be nothing shady but a matter instead of....Security? Some, some thing for the Space Forces?"

Mike stopped for a minute at that. "I'd've been told."

The Turk said nothing.

"Probably, I'd've been told. Dammit, Turon, do you not check on the holds?"

"For pilferage? For shifting? For improperly-secured containers, for cranes and carriers unstowed? Yes. Of course, yes. For mystery containers that should not exist? Of how many thousands? This you think I should be doing? Hanh! Do I tell you how to, how to, securify?"

"Yes. Every time we have to have a little talk."

"Hah! I should not help you at all, ever. But, for the sake of long acquaintance.... I can see what we may have from the cameras. It will not be much, after 72 hours, only the proxies are kept, very low-rez, you understand?"

Mike gritted his teeth. He knows about as much about the practical side of security video as anyone aboard and the Turk was hardly unaware of it. The Lupine is just too blamed big to watch every bit of, let alone keep all the images; Moore's Law notwithstanding, whenever data storage capacity gets bigger and cheaper, Navigation and Control are the first to get it, followed by Environment and Physical Plant. Security gets the leftovers. Stores & Cargo is more concerned about immediate issues -- personnel safety, fire and chemical/biological hazards -- and their systems lean heavily to realtime coverage, archiving only for insurance purposes.

About that time, motion caught his attention: T's team taking up position, as seen through her camera. He saw Jon S. step through the opening and held up a hand to silence the Turk.

* * *
John S. had a better view but it wasn't much, just what the camera had shown: a narrow path between opaque-wrapped pallets of lumpy unknowns, meandering just enough to conceal the source of light at the far end. He catfooted down it carefully, feeling a slight shift as Alan stepped in and hoping there was nobody else to notice. He had to turn sideways to clear the heaped cargo on each side but the foot was clear. Closer to the far end of the container than he'd thought, he came to the bend and slowed even more. Ahead, bright light shined through another opening about the same size as the one he'd first entered. He gestured Alan to stop and cover, started to take a deep breath, thought better of it and stepped through, sidearm held close, attention wide for threats.

-- Into a narrow space with -- counters? -- on each side. No, not counters, open-sided crates, counter-height, holding an array of shiny cylinders and at the far end of the aisle they created, a man sat, quietly, watching, with a mildly amused, mildly worried expression. "Well," he said in his softly musical, German-sounding Lyndon backcountry accent, "You got Katrina and now you're here. What next?" It was Villem. George Welle's assistant.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Another Day, Part 12

(GO TO BEGINNING)

Sure, a secret agent. It could not possibly fail to be any less glamorous than my Real Career Between The Stars (or whatever it is I do around here), right?

Riiiight. "Earlybird" puts me on duty as the overnighters are doing lunch, call it 0430 if you like. I didn't, but I had to anyway. I'd had trouble getting the wave out of my bangs, ends sticking out caterwompus despite vanity’s dab of styling gel, and I'd had to resort to hair spray. (There are lots of ways to zero-G-proof your hair, clips and braids and ponytails, but bangs take stickum). That's probably trivial where you live but it gums up the filters in a sealed system; you can cook, use hair-spray and so on (no volatile spray-paint!), but Environment & Physical Plant monitors the pressure drop across the air-return filters and if yours reaches the limit too early compared to the standard, you buy the replacement and they're not cheap.

Still, groomed (-ish), rested (more or less) and fed (coffee and a roll counts, right?), I stumbled my way down the slidewalks to Engineering at only a little past the appointed hours. Drew was waiting at the hatch. "Hi there! I'm headed for lunch — Conan should be back any minute," and he was off. Well, that's Drew, utterly reliable, unflappable and keenly aware of the exact minimum requirements for any task. He's also our best source for reports on Conan the Objectivist's temper-driven flights of verbal fancy (e.g, "Does the Chief expect me to excrete obsolete germanium transistors?"), which makes him an invaluable asset to his peers.

Looked at the "incoming" shelf and there wasn't anything critical waiting; picked up a terminal from the rack by the hatch to the Chief's office cubby, plopped it down on an open workbench (hooray for wireless!) and logged on. Nothing new in TASKER. E-mail, let's see, free tix to some play on our next stop (we're still inbound to Frothup, an ex-Far Edge settlement as you can tell from the name), free passes to the zoo likewise, lucky winners get round-trip travel and overnight accommodations.... Yah, yah, I never win those, I just hitch with a squirt-booster pilot; there's usually room, especially on the off shifts. Something from Mike, an FYI: "We're sweeping cargo for freeloaders starting 0100. Will let you know if anything/anyone we find clears Welles..." Oh, that'll be being effing big fun -- remotely-operated vehicles scanning the exposed cargo containers for unaccounted heat/chemical signatures while mixed teams of Stores & Cargo and Security types go through the Port and Starboard conditioned-space holds. H'mm, it's just about certain I know someone beside Sheriff Mike who's on that....

Why wonder? Dug out my celphone and scrolled through the contacts list 'til T's name came up. Ring. Ring. "'El-o?" Wide awake, when she's usually on straight-up first shift.
"T, it's Bobbi--"
"This-is-notta-good-ti-yum—"
"So, you're on the lurker sweep and Mikey's right next to you, then?"
"Yup."
"Aha. Later?"
"'Kay."

H'mm. I'd call Ivan but odds are good he's either in the same room, busy or sleeping. I don't know him all that well but enough to know he's not quite as patient with noseyparkers as T, and she's not very. Besides, Mike will notice, if he hasn't already. Too, while T will hang back, watching her teams on vid until something breaks or she's decided it's about to, while Ivan's usually in the thick of things from the git-go. Different cops, different approaches -- also, Ivan never had a fool of a remote-drone op slam into him on the hull, smash both shins and breach his suit, hitting hard enough to knock out the suit's radio and keep on going, while T, well, it must have been a hellish hand-over-hand back to the nearest airlock where they found her passed out after she'd hit the "Pressure" and "Emergency Call" buttons. It was how she'd got the promotion to shift supervisor -- not for being tough and most certainly not for getting badly injured on the job, but by successfully and professionally running, from her hospital bed, the investigation that caught the perp.

T's quick to point out it wasn't that much of a prize; Mike's got four (4!) patrollers on his watch, T and Ivan make do with all of three each and what they deal with outside routine cargo security work is mostly foot patrol in the "public" spaces plus the usual loud arguments, drunks, fights and the occasional pilfering or vandalism that any large ship or small town gets. When they need more help, there's the Auxiliary Security Force ("Security Oxen" or even just "The Oxes" if they're not in the room), mostly Stores & Cargo and Environment & Physical Plant types and a few of the more-ambitious riggers, some of who have, at differing times, more free time than the Starship Company figures is good for them. For a lurker sweep, the teams are made up of one Security fulltimer and one or two Auxes and if more than a half-dozen teams are needed, the best of the Auxes get brevetted.

* * *
My shift was uneventful other than a spate of message from a planet-side data-comms outfit complaining about link quality; I switched to one of the backups before grabbing an RF meter and optical TDR and backtracking from the receiver all the way to the point where the coax entered the hull. Just my luck, four hours later I'd proven the signal was crummy all the way back to vacuum; I logged on to schedule riggers to check the antenna and found a half-dozen chiding queries about it, the last an abashed, "Link good now, er, just realized you're a starship and light-_hours_ out!" New on the job, are we? Made it back to the shop just in time to put my toys away and go off-shift. Time to go be a spy!

* * *
...Some excitement that was: stroll "downtown" and mill around in the park for an hour. The Great man never showed. A sullen-looking middle-aged man with the musically Germanic accent of the Linden backcountry accompanied by a thirtyish, pudgy blonde with a motherly smile eventually announced to the crowd that "Mr. Vell-es" was feeling a little poorly and would not be speaking that afternoon.

The crowd was an assorted bunch, from kids just barely walking through elderly folks. Well over half Lyndoners and most of them I'd guess at citydwellers, but the remainder were from all over, judging by accents and attire. Even a couple of sure-nuff Russians, I don't know from Earth or one of the string of planets the old U.S.S.R. had established along their section of the Hidden Frontier. None of them struck me as particularly blissed-out or cult-y and their reaction to Welles' absence was no more than ordinary concern. The guy who'd shared the news -- "Vill," would you not just know -- didn't seem to have any particular power over them. I spoke with a few people who said hi and made my way home. Stopped off at "Gumbo A-Go-Go" for takeout (the Hidden Frontier, well above any storm surge, got its share of Katrina refugees, handpicked by recruiters from Starship Company, our competitors and reps from organizations on a couple of planets. We got Georges, who made his way from E&PP Food Services chef to self-employed in record time, to the very great benefit of those of us aboard Lupine! Sure wish I knew where he gets that bread) and slidewalked home, looking forward to a nice dinner, a sound sleep and a day off. --Not that the Fates'd let the last item happen!

But you already know that tale of woe.

Not my idea of fun but there are worse ways to spend half of your day off -- I didn't even have to leave my cabin, though I'll admit to a little trepidation to Dr. Schmid roaming around Engineering with a tweaker and the access codes. He's a fine officer and a good man but it has been awhile since he slung solder, which he mostly didn't, having been a Navs wonk before The Starship Company decided he was officer material. "Should you ought to be doing that, Sir?" is not anything you can delicately ask and the fact is he's right nine times in ten dealing with hands-on tech, despite a terrifyingly theoretical approach. But we get one day off for every five on -- maybe it sounds unfair to you but what would I do with the extra day, mow the lawn? Paint the house? Climb Everest? -- and so I decided to make the best of the half-day I could grab. And then ended up back on the phone later that evening.

Found a note from T in my personal online inbox, her usual terse e-mail style: "A busy night's sweep, call for info." Sent a half-hour ago, her second-shift morning. So I rang her up.

While I'd been chasing signals and chasing my tail in the park, Mike's Security crew had indeed been busy. He'd put T's group inside the hull and had Ivan's lot plus the best three cargo drone remote ops checking the unpressurized cargo (T still bears a bit of a grudge). Initial "outside" scan showed a handful of hotter-than expected containers, two Starboard and one Port with mild chemical signatures of the sort that usually indicate habitation.

It takes a closer look to ID the exact container and the most likely-looking choice was put third when a cross-check with the manifest turned up fertilized eggs as the contents. The rates are considerably less for what S&C likes to call "deck cargo," so I guess it makes sense. The next suspect looked even more that way when no listing could be found of it and Ivan and a couple of helpers were moving in for a closer look when the cargo chief on duty called them off: Space Force, USSF military cargo, Hands Off. Soldiers In a Can? I asked but T refused to speculate. And thus on to the next one, all the way across the width of the ship and forward, so our stalwarts called for a remote drone carrying a "personnel pod," little more than an armored framework with benches and tie-downs and rode most of the way across.

You can't exactly be stealthy in a pressure suit but Ivan comes as close as anyone can, despite being about 1.5 men high and wide. His pair of Auxes, guys he's worked with for several years, are nearly as good. They worked their way among the containers towards the heat source, scanned the barcode and found the contents listed as "furniture, office, assorted; pressure-tight." With a double hatch, no less, perhaps for fussy Customs inspectors: a basic airlock, big enough for one suited individual who doesn't suffer from claustrophobia. Leaning his helmet carefully on the wall, Ivan could hear sounds, possibly voices, the occasional scrape or thump. And as T put it, "even a redhead knows that's not what office furniture sounds like." Time to see what's inside!

Ivan went first, his Auxes stacked up beside the outer hatch ready to follow or react to his quick exit -- or whatever it took. There's no way to cycle an airlock quietly, even an unpowered one; the dogs and bolts thud and clank, air hisses through the valves and it is not a sudden or subtle process. By the time pressure in the lock was close enough to the pressure in the cargo container to free the inner hatch, whoever was in there was well-warned.

...Not that any warning would have been enough to clear out the cigar smoke, though you'd've thought between three riggers and four S&C crewfolk, at least one would've swept the cards out of sight: In full vacuum gear, Security insignia big and bright, Ivan had just crashed a poker game.

Playing cards for money is hardly against company policy; there's a nice "game room" up in passenger territory (middle-sized casino), open to anyone who can comply with the dress code, that turns a healthy profit, undeterred by even our most straitlaced port of call (cough, Kansas II, cough). There is no end of polls and lotteries, card games, dice and for all I know, pitch-penny and liar's poker (look it up). Nor is there a blanket ban on smoking; there are two designated smoking compartments for crew and subcontractors and a posh smoking parlor off the aforementioned casino for the paying customers. Though the rates are ruinous and your neighbors are liable to complain if they get a hint of it, you can even have your own quarters fitted out for smoking. (Smoking does do bad things to your mandatory insurance premiums, but hey, nothing's free). Indeed, both S&C and the rigging department tend to have long stretches of largely-idle time and while official policy encourages keeping busy (hence the Security Auxiliaries and our mostly on-call Fire/Pressure, etc. department), supervisors turn a blind eye to innocent amusements.

However, opening up sealed cargo containers and burning cheap stogies therein, that is not so innocent and it's certainly against Starship Company regs. The fire risk and crummy air quality only made it worse; Ivan, the mildest of men most times, is nevertheless of "One riot, one Ranger" size and when riled up, it is a rare man indeed who can stand up to him. He barked, "Hold it! Hands up!" as he kicked the cheap hatch shut behind him and the boys just about swallowed their cigars in the eagerness to comply. His Auxes, listening over his open mic, piled into the lock together and cycled it as quickly as they dared but by the time they were in, Ivan had the miscreants lined up, looking sheepish and sounding off.

Good gossip and a good catch -- shippers pay us, trust us, darn it, to take proper care of their goods -- but hardly cause for murder and I said as much to T.

"Oh, wait 'til I tell you the rest," she said, and started to relate her side of the lurker sweep.

Her team's first hit turned out to be a still. (It never fails. The _Lupine_ has no shortage of places to buy all grades of alcohol and yet just like every starship of sufficient size and most of the sublight haulers, too, there is always some crewman who's just got to build a still). They noted it for surveillance and moved on. Another of her teams carefully worked its way up on...a trysting couple. On the clock. But at least they were married, though not to one another. Handed them over to their supervisor; The Starship Company doesn't much care who you sleep with but frowns on so doing on company time. Other possibilities turned out to be false alarms, though one did give Stores & Cargo advance notice on a small chemical leak. It was after that that things started to get interesting and T left the S&C office Mike had borrowed to join her lead team.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Another Day, Part 11

(GO TO BEGINNING)

(The plot thickens. -Ish).

What with one thing and another (especially the SHF control/telemetry dish that hopped a rotational stop which the remote-drone ops ignored 'til the cabling was well and genuinely axle-wrapped, in 3-D), I'd about shelved my own efforts at the puzzle of the stardrive-killed Space Marine -- let alone our H-F.d. visitor -- when I got a call from the Security director a week later. "Bobbi? I think maybe you can help me."

"Really? 'Cos, you know, 'I'm not a cop--.'"

He heaved a sigh. "And neither am I, when you get right down to it. Me and my staff are as close as we've got. But I need somebody who's already got the skinny on the situation and Dr. Poole is too recognizable."

"So what happened to, 'Leave this to the professionals?'"

"Look, Nancy Drew, he knows me and everybody I've got who I'd trust to get this right is up in passenger territory regularly, in uniform, so they're out, too. Like he's not gonna know Miss T on sight? Or Ivan, for that matter?"

"H'mmm, point. But -- 'He?' 'Get what right?'"

"Aw, geez, maybe Doc Poole would be better. This isn't a game!"

"Okay, okay. But what is it?" I was pretty sure I knew already, but I was irked about the "Nancy Drew" wisecrack -- that's the second time this week!

"It's that guy -- George Welles. The Hopkin-F preacher guy. I need someone to see what he's like when he's not being watched."

"What's he got to do killing a Space Marine?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe— Those "Marines" aren't just soldiers, y'know; they're more like the Mounties or old-time Texas Rangers. So we've got a some kind of a preacher on Far Edge medication, plus a dead Far Edger who's as near as they get to law enforcement and just happened to board at the same stop, which just happens to be a place without a lot of passenger traffic that has a bad history that includes a surplus of self-appointed 'great leaders.' Maybe it's just me but it smells funny."

"With all that, this Welles guy is not gonna think I'm a watcher? What kinda hokey name is that, anyway?"

"I don't know about his name and I'm not asking you to do anything but get curious and keep your eyes open! Besides, how's he gonna know you're not a passenger...?" He went on to explain how his foolproof plan was foolproof. I only half-listened; I was thinking about the mess on Lyndon. Or Linden. Or Peace & Freedom. Or Sunblack II --It's all the same world and the same mess. It's history I picked up in bits and pieces - - a charity drive here, a web page six there, wild rumors and a little time on-planet. It boils down to a mess.

It was the first world the Far Edge ships found after they fled Project Hoplite, the unbuilt missile base on the Moon. And it's the first world settled, too, only not in that order. It was settled in 1946, which is why the Edgers were headed that way. It's not why they skipped out; the ringleaders had decided the Lunar base would be too destabilizing long before they launched and had made their plans and picked their crew accordingly. But what they found when they got there put matters in an entirely different light.

There are plenty of places on Earth's Moon where one might locate a missile base. Some are better than others but it was a matter of chance the three scout ships of Project Hoplite would pick the site they did. That one of the pilots of the 27 ships that followed would notice implausibly regular formations in a nearby crater was not a surprise; inattentive fliers don't last long, let along get far enough along to be where Lt. Farrelini found himself.

The mix of caution and, shall we say, "appreciation of risk" that put so talented a pilot at the controls of a barely prototyped vehicle relying on dangerously-immature technology must have guided his next move. Rather than report his sighting (see how well the conspirators had chosen their rebels?), he noted the location and bided his time. Several weeks later, in his surface assignment as a tractor driver, the Lieutenant wrangled assignment to the survey party headed that way. And proceeded to drive the geologist and surveyor with him right to what proved to be the abandoned remains of a Luftwaffe base.

Yeah.

It's not the sort of thing one would expect. Wild rumors about "The Bell" and preposterous photo-hacks purporting to show flying saucers strain too far at credulity. But there it was, dark, empty and ransacked. One stubby cylinder-shaped vehicle, half-wrecked, stripped of all usable parts [1]; meager pressurizable huts, airlocks gaping; what might have been a solar-powered boiler, engine and generator; collapsed greenhouse-like structures; a few personal possessions and, tucked behind the open inner hatch of one hut's airlock, a stack of thin metal sheets scratched full of closely-packed, tiny writing. The Deus ex machina only goes so far; none of the men could read the language but it certainly looked as German as the faded labels on the doors. Not to mention the stylized eagles clutching an infamous symbol.

That's right. Space Nazis.

There was an abortive effort to keep it hushed up but the cat was soon out of the bag. Translated, the message on the plates told a hardly-believable tale; a secret base planned as yet another "war-winning weapon" proving instead to be one more drag on the dwindling resources of the Third Reich, the warrior-explorers and a small group of "experimental subjects" marooned as the Third Reich fell to the Allies. 'Drive radiation had taken a toll on the group and it was evident Germany was lost; the survivors had reworked the vehicles and planned to flee the inhospitable Moon. Mars and Venus were ruled out after one-way scouting missions to each one resulted in a barely-survived crash followed by reports of insufficient air from Mars and an attempted landing turning to screams from the atmosphere of Venus. In desperation, they'd chosen a long leap to the nearest earthlike star. One man, proud or optimistic of eventual victory, had scribbled it all down in secret on scraps left from the salvage work and left it for those who would follow after.

For the cabal that had hijacked Project Hoplite and the crew they'd recruited, it must have seemed pure serendipity: they had the atomic-armed missiles they wanted to get out of the hands of any government on Earth, the ships, the material and supplies to build a base -- or a mobile space station, a huge ship. They were already planning to disappear and now they had a Mission. A Quest.

I'll just hit the high points: the hurried partial assembly of their vast wheel of a "mother ship" and departure from the Moon, the long, hard, tragic finishing work done in solar orbit, the seizure of one ship by disaffected group members and its disastrous attempt at returning to earth and the consequent premature FTL jump to the indicated star added up to several years. You can imagine the consternation, confusion and re-reevaluation that ensued when they arrived at to find an Earthlike planet that at first appeared uninhabited. Eventually, they found several huddles of hovels: New Germania. And over a hundred very hungry survivors. Compassion won out over caution at first, though at least half the ex-Hoplites wanted to bomb the site from orbit and keep moving. The compassionate faction landed, taking seeds and supplies; this was still when landing was a chancy proposition. It was a one-way trip. The ship, designed for a Moon landing, didn't have enough thrust for a soft landing at the limit of their 'Drive's accuracy and as luck would have, the last hop was overly low. Crunch-down knocked the CLASSIFIED out of alignment, killed both phantasmajector tubes and injured most of the crew. More bad luck followed: sickness raged among the landing party and no further physical contact was allowed. There you have it, Step One of the mess on Linden, the original jackboots-on-planet having been Step Zero. Things improved for a while once the virus had run its course but suspicion and hostility remained on all sides. The ship-bound Far Edge (they'd begun to refer to themselves as being on "the far edge of everything" by then) were settling in to their new life; planet-side, a wary truce prevailed, as the new arrivals had brought seeds, animals and additional tools and expertise. There were even the stirrings of a basic government and steady contact between the planet-bound and space-dwellers.

It was five years after the arrival of the Far Edge when the first ships of the US Space Force arrived, small scout ships streaking through the system on sputtering stardrives, popping in and out of the rational universe, taking photos and making radar sweeps on every emergence into normal space. The Far Edge gathered together and without a word to the planetary civilization, vanished into 'Drive. Call it Step Two of the Mess on Linden. Steps Three, Four, Five and Six would be the subsequent contact, establishment of a military government, settlement by colonists from Earth using newly developed re-entry techniques and the first civil war. It's been forty years since somebody threw out the first incendiary bomb and things have never really settled down; full-on war is rare but no government (or name for the place) has lasted more than five years unless you count the Farmer's Market. The only real sign of progress was when they'd renamed the main port "Star City" instead of "New Germania" and stuck with it.

That's where our "holy man" had been. If peace had spontaneously broken out in his wake, the news hadn't reached the Lupine yet.

* * *
If you're a passenger, a big starship is nearly as class-conscious as an old ocean liner; First and Second class share a dining room and some -- but not all -- of the lounges; Third Class is its own world. It's not as bad as "steerage" on a late XIXth-Century steamship, but it's as basic and crowded as minimum-allotment crew quarters. All passengers and crew have access to the commercial section, our "downtown," at the very bow of the Lupine. First and Second Class passengers make much use of the restaurants, bars [2] and gift shoppes but nearly all those who travel Third have little reason to go there other than the tiny park E&M maintains; it's free, about the only price most of them can afford.

It's quite a nice park, given the constraints of star travel. There are no tall, heavy plants, no large fountains or loose mulch and the koi pond is under glass. Three low "hills" and natural-looking rock walls covered in vines and other plants make the space seem even larger than it is and with a high blue (fake) haze and full-spectrum lighting overhead, it's the next best thing to being dirtside. If that's your thing. Me, I use it as a shortcut to get from the McMaster storefront at one end of district to Swearengen's (an electrical wholesaler based out of Kansas II that I swear stocks everything. All the time.) at the other; sometimes I dawdle or even take lunch there, if I can justify the time.

With this buildup, you know what's coming: our mysterious mystic and his band of followers(traveling Second Class) had taken to gathering in the park a couple afternoons a week and had -- quelle suprise -- started to gather an audience that included no few passengers from Third, Second and one or two from First. Mike proposed I start attending, too, minus my usual collar pin (a lot of us wear 'em; 'Drive Engineering's sigil is the "exploding gear," the lightning bolt and sector gear of Engineering on a starburst, all in gold if you've got the full certification. Not that I'm proud or anything). Of course he had to add that what I usually wear would fit right in, which is both mostly true and a bit of a put-down. Hey, it's a physical job.

It wasn't a terrible idea but I'm not all that anonymous. Plenty of the merchants know me. Security, E&PP workers of various sorts and officers are a lot more widely recognized than Engineering tekkies. Mike's answer to that was "It's unlikely. So what if you are? You're not Security, you're not an officer. Why wouldn't you be honestly curious?"

I wasn't so sure anyone would believe that but I'd've eventually gone to see what the guy was about anyway. Most of my reluctance was for Sheriff Mike's benefit. I agreed.

Nothing's ever easy; the very next afternoon, after a nasty morning, we lost the main stepdown transformer feeding the 'Drive finals, which I described earlier. That gave Mike time to convince the Chief to stick me on the earlybird day watch (gee, thanks) and take me off-call for a couple of hours after my shift on the days Mr. (Rev.?) Welles and company had their shindigs. I was startin' to have my doubts but like it or not, I was a secret agent. Or something.

* * *______________________________
1. The cylinder's just the lifesystem; the 'Drive it sits on at rest, and dangles at the end of a long cable from in FTL flight, is roughly bell-shaped. The crudity of the whole assemblage gave rise to the Far Edge slang term "glockey" for a kludge. Hilarity ensued when trade between Earth and the Edge started up and they saw their first Austrian plastic.
2. Sure, we’ve got bars, have a drink! But woe betide the crewmember that shows up for duty noticeably Under The Influence or fails a random alk test.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Another Day, Part 10

(GO TO BEGINNING)

At least breakfast hadn't had time to cool down.

* * *
The Chief had arrived at Engineering with the first shift earlybirds. He was in a mood and sharing it all 'round when I showed up. Like most of his humors, not without reason; we're still inbound on the long slowdown to our next port of call. As always happens once another Jump's well along, the Engineering Shop has become quite sloppy — things piled atop things. Random unrepairables-for-salvage litter the work benches along with parts, tools, printouts and bits of wire, metal and plastic. While the clutter is considerably less than would be found in other venues where electronic devices come to be healed and is usually not so bad that a bumpy exit from or entry to normal space does much damage, it's A) against the Starship Company's rules and B) plenty dangerous when we're going from the standard .75G to nil and back again while making planetary orbit.

The Chief being the Chief, he leans to invoking a combination of item A and incredulous outrage that any group of tekkies, anywhere, could ever produce a mess so tangled and dire; nor does he spare any of us, no matter how careful we've been. His approach stings, though he believes he's making a concession to our pride by soft-pedaling the safety aspects. Me, I'm all too aware the debris doesn't care if you left any of it out personally when it slams into you. The injury you prevent by cleaning up after the other guy may be your own!

Big Tom was in, along with Terry (another USSF legacy tech); C. Jay, and Jonny Zedd were there too, having been the lucky earlybirds met by the Chief. Handsome Dave was still checking out escape pods (more properly "points of refuge," since they do not themselves escape to anywhere: they allow crew and passengers to escape depressurization, hazmat and such), safely distant in a squirt-booster bay. Some guys have all the luck.

Aw, who needs 'im; we had enough hands to get the job done in short order and sure enough, by mid-shift, we'd sorted and stowed and produced two piles, one of saleable scrap (you'd be surprised what some of the worlds we visit will buy) and another, smaller, for the jettison drum. The Chief had harrumpfed a few of our choices to save (this is a man with a large, professionally-framed photo of a helicopter being pushed off an aircraft carrier posted on a bulkhead in his office), so off they went, too.

Jay had put off lunch (he and Tom have been lunching together since before I signed aboard) and I tagged along. Terry and the Chief were enough to cover, especially since we were only going down the passageway to the palatial breakroom that serves Engineering, Ops, the Bridge, Navs and anyone else with the right access card. 'Cos it's a hot ticket.

Perhaps I'm too sarcastic; the Hospitality gang loads our sandwich machine with decent stuff and depending on our last few ports of call, the candy and crisps selection is pretty outstanding. On the other hand, the beverage selection is the same rotgut coffee you get out of vending machines everywhere, reconstituted juices and the sodas, well, let us merely refer to wildly variable takes on "OpenCola" and let it lie.*

But dish--! That, we've got. Tom had the latest and shared it in a disapproving tone. "'Dija hear we picked up one of those, um, glovers on our last stop? People think they're hearin' from God?"

I listened with interest; Big Tom possesses the kind of quiet, certain faith one associates with monks, while his long-time friend is resolutely certain there is Nobody Up There. It suits them but you don't want to be caught in between.

"Glovers," said C. Jay. "You mean someone with Hawkins-F Dysplasia? How is he even managing to travel? That's a serious downcheck for starships. The way I hear it, even zero-G is too much for some of 'em, flashbacks or something."

"Word is the Edgers've got some new drugs. With those and tranks, some of 'em can hold up, though I don't know why they'd want to."

I hadn't known about the passenger or the drugs. H'mm. I said,"Tom, you are a fount of knowledge. Where's he headed?"

"I haven't heard but I do know he's got a whole passel of admirers up in passenger country."

Jay snorted. "Figures."

"No, really. He got on at Lyndon with a bunch of them. Well, six or seven. Just average folks. Paid cash."

Jay whistled; I looked piously at the overhead and quoted, "'...Yea, though I walk though the valley of the Shadow of Death...' That's seriously weird. Most of the Hopkins-F types say the experience is ineffable: can't be meaningfully described, only experienced first hand; and the rest of 'em don't say anything. Does that sound like 'Linden' or 'paid cash' to you?"

"Aw, c'mon!"

Jay just grinned but I never know when to shut up. "Tom, you've gotta admit, not many get to leave there who can't put 'ex-Big Cheese' or 'former El Supremo' after their name and they're usually chased by a warrant. Or worse."

"That's not true, what about the Francises?"

Third-generation farming family, big family; saved and scrimped and did without starting as soon as they realized the problem with Lyndon/Linden until the whole family could Get Out, or gens 2 and 3 anyway, the first generation having paid the price of their misjudgment. It's all-round unusual, as farmers are about the only bunch most of the various failed governments have left alone; mostly, anyway. The Francis family was a three-day wonder in the Far Edge media five years back, with a lot of pointed commentary that made things a little hot along the hazy border for awhile. "An exception, Tom, and that's the only reason any of us heard about it. Or remember."

"Yeah but it wasn't just them—"

"And it got a lot harder to leave after that, too, right up until the last government there crashed over it and took their banks down with it. They haven't had anything big enough to even pretend to be a government since, either."

"Well, that's where he got on. And he's picked up twice as many people since, too."
______________________________
* The flip side is that a small vial of neroli oil is better than gold; even the systems where the genuine article is easy to come by have no shortage of patriotic entrepreneurs turning out their own version. Make mine Moxie — if I can't get it reliably, I might as while be missing something unique.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Another Day, Part 9

(GO TO BEGINNING)

The next day, I'm up, knockin' around in what passes for a kitchenette about this flying junkyard. My 400 square feet costs extra -- standard housing allowance for a tekkie rents a nine by twelve cabin with private, zero-G-ready bath, built-in bunk (zig-zagged with your next-door neighbor: one side gets an upper bunk, the other a lower), built-in desk (with telephone, looking nothing like yours at home), built-in dresser, built-in closet (zig-zagged with your other neighbor) and just about enough room to turn around once you bolt down a tiny fridge and a comfortable chair.

Me, I would just as soon have more space; standard-issue was a big step up from a 'Drive Engineer's berth on the Schramm but that was just about indescribable to anyone Earthside who hasn't served aboard a submarine, or so they tell me. So my 20x20 has a bunk-in-a-cubby like the standard but there's room for two walls of bookshelves (with mandatory retaining bars) and something kitchen-like on the far wall: tiny microwave, an actual sink (with zero-G lockouts and a extra tap for near-boiling water), a smallish fridge, cabinetry and countertop including a breakfast bar. No range -- there's a section of countertop where one can be swapped in but you would not believe the extra cost, especially what it does to one's insurance rates. Still, maybe someday-- Or not; what I have now suits me very well.

I was pondering the thrills and excitement of recent events (sounds better than "horror and tragedy" even though that's closer. It's the frontier. People die -- and you don't get used to it) while watching coffee drip through the Chemex (probably another item that'd drive my insurance up if I'd bothered to ask) and the microwave count down to hot oatmeal. The last especially noteworthy happening during my time on the Lupine was when one of the ship's librarians had smuggled a Slow Loris aboard and the critter had, in its methodical way, wandered off and vanished. No harm, no foul that time: the little prosimian had turned up in the break area for the Central Power Room, being tickled and fussed over by a group of electricians and fusion techs to their mutual delight. The group was blissfully unaware their new friend had poisonous elbows; the librarian was reprimanded and fined but the Captain spared the Loris after meeting it. It now resides in a well-appointed garden cage in the center of the small hardcopy portion of our library, looked after by a group of trained volunteers, including the smuggler.

No such fairytale ending this time, just a dead stranger who'd been closer to the 'Drive field array than I was comfortable thinking about. She'd had a tattoo on one forearm, a design that had looked familiar. Where had I seen that stars and rifles pattern before?

The microwave went bing! as realization dawned: Far Edge Marines. It's not something seen much this side of the nebulous intersection between the Earthside sphere of influence and the advanced but elusive Far Edge, but there's trade and contact at settled planets throughout that overlap. In my second and third years on Lupine, the ship had made the long swing out as far as La-a ("La-DASH-a" and don't ask; there's no parsing the planetary naming process at the Far Edge) and back, and F. E. Mil/Space (it's just our side calls 'em "Marines") had been recruiting heavily; the logo and their motto ("Peace Through Strength") had been all over. Our mystery corpse had been a Space Marine! --Or, less likely, involved with one. It's not a mark to bear lightly.

Oatmeal and coffee forgotten, I went to the phone and called Sheriff Mike's office. Rang right through to him; I babbled my clever observation.

"And y'think I might've missed that?" he replied.

I stammered something, caught up in belated wit. Mike's ex-USSF and second-generation at that; in his office on the bulkhead opposite his desk there's a large photo poster of the ruins of the never-finished Lunar missile base the Far Edgers took off from and his computer desktop image is the ice plain on Ganymede where the only real battle between USSF and FE troops was fought, inconclusively for all but the fallen. The latter group included Mike Senior.

I managed, "But-- What's a Space Marine doing on the Lupine?"

"There's the question, Nancy Drew. Maybe I should give you a hand with the Stardrives?"

"...I had that coming, Mike. Okay."

"I know y'want to help. It's my headache."

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Another Day, Part 8

(GO TO BEGINNING)

Maybe I should have said, "Not that complicated to misdiagnose?" One of the two; while anticipating the Chief's wrath, I went back to put the cover over the Isolated Supplies board and looked directly above it to see a pair of fat filter capacitors, screw-terminal ones, with the screws, well, gee: a bit unscrewed. Hanging at angles, the lugs that should be held down are instead supported by the wires that connect to them and looking a little burned. It's not all that obvious if you're looking in from the outside but from less than a foot away, how did I miss it earlier? And how long has it been this way?

"Hey, Jon, I think I've found something -- hand me that Philips, willya?" Sure enough, the screws are wobbly-loose and for no good reason. We haven't changed out the components or the subassembly they're a part of since this PA was installed, five years ago. Whatever, those caps are across the heater supply and the connections should be tight.

So I proceed to torque them down and Jon and I button up the cabinet, set everything back to normal and power it up with no signal applied. Whoa! Heater voltage is way up there, much higher than it had been. A good sign but we had to shut down, open the back and change to a lower voltage range. Fine, twenty minutes of my life I didn't need anyway.

On the next go-round, things are looking up: voltage in the right range, though we still have to run it a little high to make the control logic happy, and the no-signal Phantasmajector current is So Fine. I trip the Buffer Amp breakers back on, applying signal, and start inching up the power control, 10 percent, 20, 30...all the way up full idle, 50 percent, with the other two PAs throttling back automagically to Almost Nil. It holds. It's happy. Phantasmajector collector current is right on the money. You know what this means? It means the Chief is probably not gonna put a lot of effort into his, "This could have been done a lot faster and more directly" lecture, is what; also we're now that much less likely to find ourselves as-good-as marooned between very distant here and even more distant there, the avoidance of which is what we in the starship biz like to think of as a Plus.

It's a funny feeling, a combination of relief, wonderment and the sincere awareness that this is something I should've caught weeks earlier.

But there's no time to bask in it; Jon looks at his watch and proclaims, "Hup! I should've been gone half an hour ago!" And he's gone in the time it takes to work the hatches. From the sounds of his egress, I'll find the outer hatch undogged.

I reduced the number 2 final back to nominal power and turned to number 3, which hadn't been getting near 100 percent. 80's the rated gotta-fix-it level; I pushed it to 50% with front-panel controls while the other two throttled back, then reached for the intercom handset and punched for Drive Control. "Gary...Oh, Eric? Get ready for a little glitch, I'm gonna drop the signal to two and one so I can run three up a bit more. Can you give me a fifty, no forty-percent duty cycle on the 'Drive waveform?"

"Okay, that's pre seven, isn't it? Yeah, there it is. Standing by."

"On my mark....mark," as I reached out and flipped the IPA breakers for 1 and then 2. Number 3 power came up but stopped at 75%. It felt as if the deck wavered ever so slightly underfoot and I heard Eric mutter, "...c'mon," then he spoke up, "Pre six. Fifty percent."

"Thanks, Eric, sorry 'bout that. Hold on just a sec--" I took the tweaker screwdriver from my pocket and turned up RF LIMIT adjustment on #3, watching the output rise past 80...90...95. "There. I'll turn it down and you can go back to normal once I get the other two back on, ready?" as the power fell low enough to get the other two finals online and Eric replied, "Whenever."

"Okay, on go: three, two, one, go." He must have hit the switch while I was flipping circuit breakers; there was hardly a glitch as we came back to three finals online and nominal idle signal to the CLASSIFIED. I took another couple of minutes getting the outputs balanced.

With all three stardrive PAs back to normal, I pull a set of readings (nice little vampire software looks at the remote control data and grabs it right into the utility portable), add notes on the problem and the solution and readings from the five meters that don't have telemetry outputs, the ones in the High Voltage section we read through a transparent window (heater voltage of course among 'em), enter that in TASKER, forward a copy to the Engineering redundant docserver, print it out (hard drives crash; active storage gets EMPed or bit-flipped by stray cosmic rays) and add it to the Maintenance Log clipboard. Might as well give the next tekkie -- or me, if I'm sleepy enough -- a head start. Plus there's still the Triennial Inspection. Never know exactly what logs and such they'll want to see.
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Securing the drive compartment takes awhile. All the tools, books, materials and supplies have to go back in their clips or cubbies. I do a quick walk-through, including checking the side compartment where the RF driver for the aft octet of ion maneuvering engines resides and on back along the pressurized sections of the CLASSIFIED and their connections to the huge power dividers and waveguides that feed power to the 'Drive projector array. It all looks nominal and I've just time to take the official Engineering electric car crawling back down the service passageway and bop up to the Engineering Shop to sign out. The main room's empty. According to TASKER, Handsome Dave finished his day in the portside squirt-booster bay, initializing some new escape pods (coolness!) but bedarned if I know where the rest of the guys are off to. I hear a chair creak from the Chief's miniature office and walk back to the open hatch. He looks up from his monitor and almost smiles, "Nice catch on the Number Two HPA, Bobbi."

Yowza. Caught me off guard. "I don't know why I didn't find it sooner, Boss."

I hear footsteps and voices behind me and the Chief harrumphs, turning back to his paperwork with a louder, "See that you do in the future!" as Conan the Objectivist and his usual shift mate enter the shop, hauling some blamed bit of dusty, malfunctioning electronics.

Hmmmmm.

That's 8-on for me, a sweep through Drive Control to trade an inquiring look for a reassuring nod with Eric on my way out of the Tech Core and onto slidewalks, five miles back aft to my apartment.

Where I lay awake and wonder about the mystery Sheriff Mike told me to ignore. Who wanders into the hot stuff unaware? It's posted in five languages and simple cartoons, repeatedly, way before you're in any danger. And it's not something that could be done to the victim; she had to get there under her own power.

(TO BE CONTINUED)