Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust

by Russell O Redman

  Instead, he stood up. “Attention everyone, stop eating immediately. The food and drink have been poisoned with mind altering drugs! Doctor Marin, Mr. Douglas, as an authorized officer of the Terrestrial Government, I hereby charge you with trafficking controlled substances and assaulting your fellow officers. Marines, come in and arrest these criminals immediately!”

  “Sergei, Sergei, calm down. Yes, these are controlled substances. On the Earth, they require a doctor's proscription. They are still controlled here, and are administered according to medical policies along with our muscle mass enhancers, radiation correctives and anti-nausea medications. They are a normal and necessary part of space medicine. They do not invalidate your terms of employment with Extraterrestrial Affairs, and the release forms you undoubtedly signed before coming up would have explained all that. I am guessing you never read the details; almost nobody ever does. Still, your physician should have explained those clauses, as should your legal advisors, given the nature of our work.”

  I looked around at the silent room. “For those who missed the start of this discussion, the food and drink we will be consuming while on board the Mao are required to provide us with medically supervised doses of mood stabilizers, sex modifiers, and a variety of other psycho-active drugs. These are legally and militarily required for everyone on the Mao. We should have our medical staff review these policies for you this afternoon.”

  I hoped the other doctors would get back soon, to relieve Marin of some of the responsibility.

  Sergei did not look mollified. “I was told I had the right and duty to refuse those drugs.”

  There were sounds of agreement from several other agents.

  Chandrapati added, “I am forbidden to take those drugs on religious grounds.”

  I hated contesting points of law with people who should be friends and colleagues. “I am sorry, but those assurances were only valid on the earth stations, not on Terrestrial Defence Force warships, which are under military jurisdiction. In any case, Agent Chou, would you please withdraw your threatened charges from Doctor Marin, who has done nothing outside her duty. It was partly at my instigation, because of security threats on the ESK, that we moved to the Mao before our resupply was complete and before the implications of that change could be discussed. I will inquire this afternoon about progress in dealing with the threat. I will also ask whether we can import food to meet custom dietary restrictions for people involuntarily on the Mao who agree to remain confined to a working set of rooms. That would still violate military law, but the Captain probably has the authority to allow the exception. Doctor Marin, I am sorry to lay an additional duty on you, but I fear the Ministers may face a similar predicament and should be informed of this issue.”

  Chou glowered, but said nothing more. He moved to the far side of the room and clipped into a chair where he could watch us all. He had not withdrawn the threatened charges.

  Chandrapati subsided, but also refused to eat or drink.

  Watching them, I ate my own breakfast and composed a report of the incident that I sent to Molongo's office. I sent a separate inquiry about progress on the ESK in resolving the security issues. I sent a request to MI to clone the messages and reports from my former ID in CI, to bring me up to date on what my team's investigation had found about the Fairy Dust. I asked them who my successor would be. I also put a request to the Captain to meet with him or a representative to discuss the security and disciplinary issues on the Mao, given the extremely sensitive political connections of the passengers.

  The beer tasted funny, as always, but this time even the mood stabilizers did not help my digestion.

  2357-03-02 22:00

  Mao be Obeyed

  Just as I finished, I got a message from the Captain, “I can meet you now. Please come across the hall to the gym.”

  I flashed acceptance and stood up carefully. “Your attention please. I have just received an invitation to meet with the Captain. I am not sure how long we will be, but I would like us to start sorting ourselves into a working group of some kind. Agent Tipu, could you prepare a rough agenda while I am away? We will need to discuss areas of responsibility, such as drugs, weapons, politics, commerce, and the like.”

  “As a point of immediate interest that we may have to raise with the Captain, Agents Chandrapati and Ashura, would you review the laws concerning licit and illicit drugs in space, with special attention to the earth stations, crew members and passengers on ships, and especially the Military Legal Code for warships. I believe our situation may be without precedence, recognizing that we have been caught unprepared in an emergency. Agent Chandrapati has legitimate personal reasons to dispute the blanket application of general purpose laws, and Agent Chou has a prior agreement waiving the requirement that he take the drugs. I know that passengers can travel on TDF warships, and have special status while they are on board, but I am concerned that their status is revoked during active military operations. As representatives from Law Enforcement, I believe your legal opinions will carry extra weight.”

  They agreed, and I headed for the door. The hallway outside was swarming with marines. Our marines had been joined by a contingent of armoured marines looking very dangerous. Three weapons swung to point at me as I opened the door. Kudos for them – the ship was fully on alert.

  I said, as evenly as I could, “I am Agent Douglas, I have been invited to see Captain Wang.”

  Marine Sa'id confirmed that I was who I said I was.

  The marines were almost indistinguishable in their armour, but one of them replied, “Marine Mugobi, Sir. I apologize for the hostile greeting, Sir. Would you accompany me, Sir?”

  Marine Mugobi was short, standing maybe one hundred sixty centimetres high. She wore tight fitting battle armour and a standard weapons rack. Her helmet was sealed; this woman could fight in the vacuum of space as easily as on the Earth or in the hallways of the Mao. I admired the look and thought briefly that she would make a good recruiting poster.

  Then, we were across the hall and into the gym, where three more armoured marines guarded a man who must be Captain Wang, himself in armour but without the obvious weapons. I walked slowly around the perimeter of the room, scanning for bugs. I silently pointed to three spots. One looked like a bit of peeled paint, one like a dark stain, and the third was an out of place rivet. I then examined the floor, finally pointing to a small black fleck. One of the Captain's attendants scooped up the four bugs, but paused on the last. He sealed them all in a small box, then turned and said, “Very good, Sir. We planted the first three, but I was unaware of the fourth which is unfamiliar and not in our lists of known threats.”

  “I am grateful to be of service, Sir. I have encountered the last bug before...” I check my embedded clock and was surprised to see how much time had passed since I had been stopped by the guard entering CI T&A. “My goodness, two and a half days ago. I did file a report with both CI and MI, but I have no idea who creates such devices, nor what they do.”

  “I see,” he replied with a vacant look. “Yes, I see it was added, but has not yet been assigned a threat level. Finding one here is disturbing. It may have arrived with the supplies from the ESK. I will notify MI, ask for an increased threat level, and start another search for these devices in the ship.” He did not groan, but if these people had spent most of the day searching the ship for sabotage and bombs, finding a new potential threat was not going to make anyone happy.

  I turned at last to Captain Wang and bowed. He bowed in return, then smiled through his visor. “Agent Duncan, I am sorry, Douglas, I take it you are the petrel who ushered in this storm? I must thank you. Despite the chaos on board my ship, I would rather fight an unexpected battle than be captured in my sleep. Your message suggested some kind of disciplinary problem?”

  “Yes, Sir. My newly formed team was intended to gather for the first time on the ESK, but most were injured during the attack on the Laika. I requested an early transfer to the Mao, so that many of them regained c
onsciousness in our current crowded quarters. I suspect this is causing some distress amongst the Ministers, who have been isolated from their staff, but even amongst the agents there is confusion and dissent. It would be very helpful if we could be put back in contact with the outside world, since none of us have been able to contact either our supervisors or our subordinates since our arrival.

  “I do not want to make more of it than necessary, but the particular issue that caused immediate concern is that two of our members object strenuously to taking the mandatory mood-stabilizing drugs. They have what would be legitimate concerns on an earth station and were apparently told that they would not be required to take the drugs, but now find themselves on a warship under military law that requires the use of those drugs. The circumstances are odd, since they are neither passengers nor crew, but are senior officers of non-military branches of the Terrestrial government. How the issue is handled will set a precedent, so it requires some thought. In the meantime, they are refusing both food and drink. We were wondering if it might be acceptable to isolate the team and provide these two at least with food and drink free of that class of drugs, at least until our position is clarified.

  “More importantly, our official charge is to investigate the Fairy Dust incident, the attack on the shuttle Laika, and a third incident involving the freighter Hanuman, with particular concern that these three incidents might be related to political developments on Mars. Ever since I picked up the Fairy Dust investigation, I have been wanting to inquire whether the radars on the Mao saw anything through the chaff, and especially after the nuclear explosion, that would tell us what the Fairy Dust was doing. Everything about that incident screams to me of Martian involvement, except that it seems to serve no purpose. At this point, any new information would help.

  “Lastly, the root cause of the discontent amongst the passengers is our complete ignorance of what is happening around us. Has there been any progress in resolving the security issues on the ESK? Is there any estimate of when we might return? For that matter, we have been accelerating for the last three hours. Can I at least tell them where we are going?”

  “A choir of angry cats in a bag, hey?” Captain Wong smiled grimly. “But if this is the worst you face, I can assure you it is much worse in the room with the Ministers, some of whom feel they have been kidnapped and imprisoned by a gang of traitors. Sadly, I cannot give them the space they need, nor return them to the ESK and their delegations. I have left General Molongo to deal with them for the moment, but will have to return soon. Let us see, I believe we should have fresh water but probably no foods that are completely drug free.” He looked at one of the marines, who nodded and left the room. “We have already opened a secure communications channel for the Ministers, I expect we can open another for you. You have all had the communications implant, haven't you? Yes, then I expect MI can handle that without the hardware we had to install for the Ministers. Some of the Ministers do not have the implant, and we must treat all of them identically or they will be offended. Your two dissenters at least have valid justifications. The ship is on lockdown and is almost incommunicado, so you will have to allow MI to monitor everything and cut the channel if any topics are discussed that might compromise the ship. I expect the easiest way to handle the rest of the issues is to address the troops directly. If you can give me ten minutes, I will come over to answer such questions as I can.”

  “Thank you, Sir, we will be ready.”

  I was ushered out of the room and across the hall. The room was abuzz with small groups that formed and dissolved as I watched. Katerina was still at the podium, but looked up in surprise when I came in. “That was quick! What is happening?”

  I addressed the room, “Excuse me everyone, Captain Wang has agreed to address us in... eight minutes now. I hate to interrupt such productive work, but I wonder if we can organize the room for his arrival?”

  Katerina came over. “I have set up a group editor for the agenda.” A link popped up in my comm unit. “We have been adding topics, and items to discuss within each topic, based on our fields of expertise. I like this comm unit. It makes collaboration almost effortless. I am not sure it would work as well in a hostile negotiation where everyone would be concerned about spying. For a group like this, though, it is great.”

  I scanned the agenda, which now included almost a dozen topics, over a hundred subtopics and team members with expertise on each one. They had also been adding links to reports that seemed relevant. I tried to read a few, but most of them were outside MI's domain and were inaccessible through the MI comm centre.

  Not wanting to be distracted, I thanked Katerina for such an impressive start and began to scan the room for bugs before the Captain arrived. I was half way around when the door opened and our three missing doctors were carried back in. Two armoured marines entered with them and began their own search for bugs. The three of us found several, mostly the new kind that I had found across the hall. One of them was attached to the hair on the back of Doctor Brett's head and had probably been acquired in the hallways, but the others were scattered around the room. I was pretty sure they had not been present earlier, but could not say when they had first appeared.

  When the scan was complete and we were all in our places, Captain Wang entered and stepped up to the podium, still wearing armour. The five marines discreetly stepped back out the door.

  “Honoured Sirs, I am sorry to have neglected you for so long. Everyone in this room has security clearances high enough to hear what I am going to say, but what I say must not leave this room. We are in the middle of an escalating security crisis, both on the earth station Khrushchev and here on the Mao. For our collective safety, movement on the ship is necessarily restricted to authorized personnel.

  “Frankly, if I had been fully aware of how dire our own situation was, I would have refused to accept the presence of the Ministers and your team on board. As you have seen just now, the ship has been infiltrated with small, automated bugs from an unknown source. Half of the food supplies we loaded from the ESK are contaminated with illicit drugs, poisons, and disease spores. We have found contraband weapons. Several crew members have been arrested who were attempting to sabotage our life support systems. I cannot supply many details beyond noting that the traitors were attempting to spread an aerosolized form of a highly addictive drug through our air supply. It is likely that some crew members are already addicts, perhaps unwittingly acting as enemy agents. Those who have not yet committed crimes will need immediate medical care beyond the resources of the ship's surgeons. We may need to call on the assistance of your medical staff to help them detoxify.”

  There was a stir from the doctors in the back the room, but he ignored it and continued.

  “I am told that ESK StaSec recommended that the transfer happen two days from now. It is just as well that you came when you did. Without the warning that triggered your early move, this ship would have been a death trap by the time you arrived.

  “Thanks to your timely warning, we were able to intercept most of the drugs and contraband, and are now interviewing all the crew, starting with myself and the bridge officers. Those who have been cleared are wearing airtight armour, in case we missed some of the drugs. I am sorry, but we cannot supply suits for passengers immediately, because they are customized for each crew member and take some training to use. We believe we have the situation in hand, but this has been a very close call.

  “The situation on the ESK has also deteriorated. There have been at least two murders that appear to be assassinations. The delegations who were waiting for the Ministers to arrive have been moved into more secure quarters for their safety. There have also been a variety of odd occurrences. A conference on space medicine and pharmaceuticals had just finished when the Fairy Dust incident occurred, and almost half of the attendees have disappeared without a trace. Most of the missing were transferring back to the Earth, or were shuttling to the other earth stations, but never seem to have arrived. There
have been unauthorized transfers of whole shiploads of goods from the warehouses.

  “As you are aware by now, one ship, the Hanuman, is returning prematurely from what should have been a routine run to Tantalus with its crew apparently all dead. Tantalus claims that the Hanuman and its crew are still there, and can provide no explanation for the incoming ship that also claims to be the Hanuman. We are concerned that Tantalus has been occupied by pirates, because the frigate that should be protecting the base is not responding. Lunar Recovery has already dispatched one of their ships to see if the Hanuman can be salvaged.

  “As the ESK no longer seems to be a safe location, and we still need an urgent resupply, we have begun a move past the ESGAN to the ESDENG. We will not stop at the Gandhi, but will pick up several crew members who were on leave there, along with some supplies. We intend to finish our resupply at the Deng, where we hope it will be possible to allow all of you to disembark. We expect to arrive there in about eight more hours.

  “We will be opening a secure external comm channel that should allow this team to contact your former colleagues. Please understand that every message will be examined by MI before transmission and upon receipt. This is a warship and the security of the ship is my paramount duty, even when dealing with other branches of the Terrestrial Government.

  “Are there any questions that I can answer?”

  Yes, there were a few questions. I stood up, hushed everyone and began to select individuals to ask their questions one at a time. Chandrapati and Chou learned that there would be drug-free water, but no food until we reached the ESDENG. It was confirmed that we were all under military law, but an exception would be permitted for a water-only diet until our arrival. After that, we could disembark or accept the full provisions of the law without exceptions. If the security situation degraded any more, General Molongo and Captain Wang were considering drafting all of us into the military. With the agreement of our former branches this would take the form of a temporary secondment for the duration of the emergency. He pointed out that Agents Pinter and Douglas were examples of such cross appointments, Douglas being a member of MI seconded to CI, and Pinter now serving in the reverse role.