Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  Just floated for a few minutes, catching her breath, accepting without surprise that her face was dripping with sweat and her shirt already wore huge stains.

  “That stunk,” she grumbled, taking the towel Maguire offered and using it to wipe herself as dry as she could manage. The Marshal didn’t give her an argument. Then she gave arms and shoulders and legs a fair shake and took up her position once more.

  “Turns out,” Maguire went on, “there’ve been rumors all along. About how dangerous it was to strike a major claim.”

  “No one ever checked it out?”

  An angry grimace that was partly shame. “Everything passed surface muster, each incident fit neatly into an appropriate box, where it was filed and forgotten.

  “But the Belters, with them everything’s personal. They saw friends, colleagues, whatever, bugging out, and it bothered ’em. Things would happen, and it bothered ’em. Us, we tagged their complaints to paranoia an’ gave ’em back official platitudes.

  “You see the cycle?” she asked. “We have nothing to go on, we figure nothing’s there, we don’t worry about it.”

  “But the Belters, they see something happening, only they can’t figure quite what, but the folks they trust to answer their questions, resolve their doubts, allay their fears, don’t.”

  Maguire nodded, set herself, leapt off on her own run through the Maze. Incredibly, to Nicole, continuing to talk as she went.

  “So the perception takes root that maybe we’re in on it, whatever ‘it’ is. So maybe we’re not trusted quite so much. So maybe folks don’t come to us as freely as they used to. And both sides drift further apart, spiraling tighter into their own spin-circles of misconception. Until they’re locked into their role as victim and we become totally ineffectual.”

  “Why?” Nicole asked as Maguire landed within a meter of where she’d started. Not a perfect round, but she’d made it the whole way, which was the next best thing. “What’s the point?”

  “Perhaps the establishment of space as somebody’s private preserve,” was her reply. “Doesn’t matter what the government says or does, they can’t protect you. For all you know, they may be in on it. Technology being what it is, the realities of distance and transport being what they are, it’s damned hard to protect yourself. Better maybe to bend with this prevailing wind and shift some allegiances. And all of a sudden, hey-presto, a very quiet de facto coup d’etat. The de jure status quo doesn’t change in the least, the legal structures all remain in place, but the realities underpinning them have just shifted fundamentally.”

  Nicole nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “If you’re into horror stories. In my whole career, I have never seen anything so subtly sophisticated, yet so brutally simple. Even today, knowing all we do, knowing what they’ve done, there isn’t a damn thing legally we can do about it. Because we can’t prove one single, stinking, lousy, actionable offense. You weep for the families on the raiders’ rock—I commend you for it, that makes you a decent soul—but there are other families involved and as a cop and a human being I can’t help thinking your actions maybe balanced some necessary scales.”

  “So I can be just like them, only it’s okay ’cause I’m one of the good guys?”

  Maguire turned back towards Nicole with such violence that she should have gone cascading across the room, only she was such an experienced spacer that she was reflexively compensating for the move even as she made it.

  “I suppose that answer depends,” she said bitingly, slipping towards the hard-edged lilt of Belfast, the city of her birth, “on how long you plan to stay feeling shit-sorry for yourself.”

  Nicole took a deep breath. Didn’t seem to help much. Even though she filled her lungs to capacity, she still had the sense that she was suffocating.

  The computer never set up the same route twice. This cycle had three bars, close at hand and tight together; she swung through them one-handed, like a chimpanzee along a horizontal ladder, giving herself a sharp twist with the last to spin herself around so she could hook the back of her knees around the next bar, kicking forward as she flipped around to intensify the spin and position her for the next. But she didn’t gain enough velocity and a final, desperate lunge only made matters worse as she careered into the wall hard enough to make an impact, even through her helmet. Without one, things would have been very messy.

  She sniffed loudly, wiping her forearm across her nose, making a face at the sight of mingling sweat and blood. She could taste the salt, with its coppery undertone, on her lips. There was a mottled soreness on her thigh she knew would soon metamorphose into a monster bruise, but she hadn’t a clue as to how it came there. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember whacking anything with her leg.

  “I’m sorry you’re a part of this, Nicole,” Maguire called from below and behind, “an’ that’s a fact. But like it or not, you’re turning into a key player. You’re short on experience, but you have good instincts and you learn faster than anyone I’ve seen this side of Ben Ciari.”

  “Which doesn’t seem to have done me a whole helluva lot of good to date,” she muttered, turning wearily baleful eyes on the Maze. Not like her at all. Oh, of a certainty she’d been beaten before; far more often than not, she failed to make a complete circuit. Hardly anyone did. But even at her worst, she’d never done this badly.

  To run the Maze required a particular form of Zen, a Oneness of the physical instrument to the task to the moment, which she didn’t have. There was a hesitancy to her movements, a conscious look to make sure she was going in the right direction—where necessity demanded that all that be done unconsciously. It didn’t matter that the look was so quick it almost didn’t register, the fact was she was taking it. Not because she needed to in order to make her decision, but to validate that decision. In a situation where she had to absolutely trust her instincts, she wasn’t.

  She was afraid.

  “You’re alive, woman, count that for something. How about considering the implications of that for a minute?”

  “Just me, you said before. Not Hana or any of the others.” And when Maguire nodded. “My parents, my family?”

  “There’s no indication thus far they’re in any way at risk.”

  “Hardly a guarantee I can take to the bank.”

  “So do something about it.”

  “You’ve got nothing on the hijacks.”

  “There were no hijacks,” Maguire told her. “In every instance, there was a legitimate transfer of title. A moderately capable lawyer could probably make a fair case that you callously and gratuitously caused the destruction of a totally legal operation.”

  “Comforting thought. Okay. Ships have owners. Cargoes have to belong to someone. Who were the titles transferred to?”

  Her question got only a dismissive shrug for an answer. “We’re still looking. Think of this as a Russian Katrinka doll—you know, the ones where you have a succession of dolls, hidden one within the other, getting smaller and smaller until you finally reach the teeny-tiny one in its heart. Only, in this case, each and every one of those dolls is hidden in its very own Chinese puzzle box. Maze piled upon maze. Shadow corporation enveloping shell company. Just when you think you’re onto something, you discover the outfit’s in long-ago liquidation with their records a tangled mess. Or it’s been sold to someone else and the information’s been lost in the shuffle. Or is now considered the proprietary property of some entity totally removed from the situation, in a locality beyond our jurisdiction, who has not the slightest interest in cooperating.”

  “If you can identify the backers, what then?”

  “What then indeed? Good question.”

  “You can’t touch them, can you?”

  “We probably can’t even secure an indictment, let alone a successful prosecution. There simply isn’t a strong enough chain of evidence. We may know the truth, I doubt we’ll ever be able to prove it.”

  “Then why am I a target?”

  Maguire sho
ok her head. “Serves no purpose, not even as a warning. As far as the incident itself went, you resolved the problem. You blew the living bejesus out of the base. On the surface, it’s over and done with. The Wolfpack is history. Great victory for the forces of law and order. Cheers and commendations all ’round. A big medal for a certain Second Lieutenant. Certainly, there’ll be aftereffects. For a while. We’ll be a lot more meticulous about looking after the Belters, maybe they’ll start being as open as they once were. But this was a long-view operation. The profits from the actual raids probably didn’t do much more than cover expenses. The idea was to strike at the whole concept of free space. Of this being an open frontier.

  “What?” she asked suddenly, seeing a change in Nicole’s expression. But the young woman shook her head.

  “It’s nuts, forget about it.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that, Lieutenant. What’ve you got?”

  “Something I’m only just beginning to realize myself. About myself. Everyone keeps fixating on my being a Second Lieutenant, but that’s not all I am anymore. Shavrin adopted me as her daughter. It isn’t a figure of speech, or a pro forma gesture. I’m a part of her family.” Unconsciously, as she spoke, Nicole let herself drift into the Maze, so that from more than one angle it looked like she was trapped; yet, at the same time, she had solid surfaces at every hand, allowing her—assuming she had the skill and courage to go for it—an extraordinary range and freedom of movement.

  “Some country, maybe?” she hazarded, not totally trusting her own deductions. “But what would they have to gain, especially with President Russell pushing his One World Treaty?”

  “My dear girl,” Maguire chided with a decidedly unfunny laugh, “if there’s anything to be learned from history, it’s how passionately we humans cleave to our various tribes. Look how hard it’s been keeping the boroughs of New York City together, much less the various elements of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Republics; hell, the United States itself. No one likes to yield sovereignty.

  “And that isn’t as farfetched a notion as you might think. Quite a few see Russell’s proposal as no more than a ploy by the First and Second World to maintain its domination of the Third. The political equivalent in their eyes of the U.S. move into Saudi Arabia back in ’90. The argument may be bogus to you and me”—she held up a hand to forestall Nicole’s outraged protest—“but a plausible case can be made in its favor. Look around, Nicole, we got Americans and Soviets and Europeans and Japanese fully represented up here. How many from Africa, South America, the Middle East, South Asia? How much innate resentment remains because, even though there may be equal opportunity for all, the road up starts at Canaveral and Baikonur? And what about the price of that opportunity, the necessity to leave the old prejudices and inhibitions and cultural structures behind? D’you know how hard it is to find Mecca from seventy light-years out?

  “On the other hand, who says we’re necessarily talking about a country?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “They’re his ships, why not his space as well? You want historical precedent, take a look at the ‘John Company.’ The British East India Company. They did most of the initial exploitation of the subcontinent. Had their own military—army and navy—a state within a nation. Where better to procure space-going hardware than at the source? One thing we do keep a serious watch on is traffic. Everybody’s supposed to be tagged and transpondered, logged into our central file. But if the vessel never gets registered in the first place, for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist. Sound familiar?”

  And Nicole thought of Stu Hanneford’s bike. Who knows, if he’d been tagged, he’d probably have been found the very night he disappeared. Might have made a difference.

  She shook her head. “I see where you’re going, I don’t buy it. What’s the motive?”

  “Me, I’d say power.”

  “You don’t think he has enough?”

  “Young Lieutenant, I truly believe, where Manuel Cobri is concerned, there’s no such concept as ‘enough.’ ”

  There was a beep from Maguire’s kit bag, a portable transceiver, shielded to provide a secure com link. The news wasn’t good, that was clear from the first. Her eyes grew the littlest bit hooded, her face losing all animation, reverting to a stoic, professional’s mask.

  “What’s happened?” Nicole asked as Maguire closed the phone.

  “Simone Deschanel is dead,” in a voice like grating stone that spoke volumes about their friendship.

  Nicole closed her eyes, and for some split seconds, no image of the other woman came to mind. So strange, how you meet someone, get to know them, imprint them into the patterns of memory, yet find vast, seemingly abyssal gaps when you suddenly try to call back their face. Or the sound of their voice. As though the act of dying had severed the bonds that kept them real inside your head and made them ghosts there as well as in reality, leaving you afraid—with varying degrees of desperation—you’ll ever get them back. And compared to Maguire, Nicole hardly knew the woman. Yet the Marshal’s face was the same as ever.

  “How?”

  “In the bedroom of your quarters, at Edwards.”

  “No.”

  “You’re out of here.” And Maguire reopened her phone, tapped in a call to Flight Control, putting a hold on the next available departure and claiming a seat.

  “Just like that.”

  “If I had a bloody transporter, like on the videos, I’d beam you down.” She gestured towards the gym door. “But this is the best I can do. Nicole,” she flared when Nicole stubbornly stood her ground, “we knew what had been tried on the Moon, we thought we covered every eventuality, and still Simone got nailed. We cannot afford the slightest risk up here, it’s too dangerous and those bastards—whoever they are—are too damn good.”

  Nicole had no argument.

  “Flight’s at Bay Three, a British Airways Scram to London Heathrow.”

  “I’m not exactly dressed for international travel.” She was in fact a moderate mess, still flushed from her workout, cooling sweat making her chilly, complete with goose bumps, painfully conscious of how her bloody nose must look.

  “Tough. Go. Wait for me at the boarding access.”

  They went out the door together, Nicole kicking off the sill into the corridor beyond, shooting diagonally across to the far wall, using the textured soles of her sneaks to increase her speed and send her up towards what was officially considered the “ceiling.” Her hope being that she could race over the heads of anyone who happened to get in her way. And for the most part, that was how things went—except for one poor soul who found himself on a collision course with her as she hurtled around a corner, scything through the air at full extension, her hands using a stanchion as a pivot. She simply let go, sliding sideways like a propellor, yanking all her limbs together into a cannonball that missed him by a whisker, then popping them out again in time to flatten against the opposite vertical. Pushed off with toes, aided by the padded buckskin palms of her gloves, was almost out of sight by the time the man recovered wits enough to yell his protest.

  She made record time, but had barely begun catching her breath when Maguire caught up with her.

  “You can use the Scram’s washroom for your face, I’m afraid the rest’ll have to wait until you’re back on home ground. The transfer connections home are as tight as we can make them. As for clothes,” she handed over the carryall, with the ghost of a smile that reminded Nicole of Kymri. And suddenly she felt glad she didn’t have Maguire after her. For any reason. “Call this a wild splash of inspiration.”

  Inside was the black flight suit of a United States Marshal, folded so the silver badge emblazoned on the left breast showed.

  Nicole looked up questioningly, got a curt nod in return.

  “It’s exactly what it looks like,” Maguire said. “Effective immediately, and for the next twenty-four hours—extensible at my discretion for the duration of this investigation—you are hereby appointed a Dep
uty United States Marshal, with all the rights, privileges, responsibilities, and most especially authority that go with it. None, however”—again, that surprising, disconcerting smile, very small, mostly to herself, as though Maguire was enjoying some private joke—“of the pay. At that grade, your equivalent rank’s a Major. But do us both a favor and don’t throw any weight around unless it’s absolutely necessary. Come the dawn, you’ll probably be back at the bottom of the ladder. If you should need the clout, though,” she added, “it’s there.”

  “You can do this?”

  Added to that smile, a mocking tilt of the head. “Up here, absolutely. Though I may be stretching the point extending my authority to the surface.”

  “What gives, Al, why the ‘Cinderella’ treatment? I mean, I’m not a trained investigator.”

  “You’re all I’ve got. There’s no one else—down there, anyway—whom I trust, Nicole.” She dialed Sutherland Mission Control, told them the British high-flyer was released to launch.

  Moments later, over the station loudspeaker system, they heard, “Attention please, British Airways Flight Zero-One to London Heathrow is now cleared for departure. All passengers and personnel should be aboard. The access airlocks will cycle in ten minutes.”

  “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

  “Answers.”

  “To who killed Simone?”

  “Officially, that has yet to be determined.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s dead. That they know. All else is open to question. And interpretation. Everything sent me from Edwards, which is I presume everything they have thus far is on file”—she motioned her chin towards Nicole’s bag—“in there. Review it on your flights.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know, Nicole. I’m flying blind, same as Judith Canfield did when she took the first Cobri starship into warp. Didn’t know what would happen along the way, or what she’d find at the other end. But she went. Now it’s my turn. And yours. We need to find out what happened. We need to push, hard and fast. As near as we can determine, the sniper sequences on the Moon were resident programs, they’d been in place awhile; the only reason you tripped the one you did was because you hadn’t been on Luna since the Wanderer flight, except for a flash visit when our Embassy left for the Hal homeworld and then after your recertification exams, which was when you almost got bagged. This is a fresh kill, if indeed it is a kill. Maybe we can turn up something, maybe the killer wasn’t as thorough this time at covering his tracks.