Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One

by Andrew van Aardvark

  “Which means, sir?”

  “Which means that even under direct parental supervision you’d have to be sixteen to work on the line legally. Unsupervised you need to be eighteen. I take it you’re not being paid?”

  “No sir, I’m an intern.”

  “First one ever on the line, I imagine,” the Chief smirked. “If they’d tried to enter you on the payroll, the software would have flagged it automatically.”

  “And nobody realized this?” Katie asked. She was beginning to feel annoyed and indignant. They weren’t wise emotions to indulge.

  The Chief sighed and gave a small smile that seemed somewhat more sympathetic and genuine than some of his earlier ones. “Neither set of laws actually makes much sense,” he said. “Though I’ll deny saying that. One’s too loose, the other too strict. Worse, they overlap. People like me and the Commander are stuck trying to apply them reasonably and the rule of the letter of law goes by the boards. If you succeed in becoming an officer in the Space Force, you’ll face similar conundrums yourself.”

  “But now I’m stuck being unable to do the task the Commander asked me to,” Katie said. “I’ll have to go back to him and beg for another chance.”

  “With your presence here having been brought so forcibly to my attention, I have no choice but to apply the letter of law,” the Chief said. “I’m going to be kind enough not to press charges against anyone.”

  He glanced over to where D’Souza was waiting patiently. “As I’ve already explained to your foreman, and will shortly explain to the Commander,” he said. “I’ll make it clear none of this is your fault. I think he’ll give you another chance at the very least.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re not our favorite daughter, Katie Kincaid,” the Chief said, “but I think most of us here on Ceres would be proud to see you get into the Academy.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome. You’re dismissed. Turn in your gear and return directly to your quarters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And try to stay out of trouble.”

  * * *

  Katie was feeling gutted.

  She’d kept her head down and done what she was told.

  She’d avoided doing things other than what she was told. She’d kept her mouth shut. She hadn’t argued with people or pointed it out to them when she thought they were being irrational. She hadn’t fought back or debated it with people when she felt they were being unreasonable.

  When she’d noticed supervisors and their workers exchanging little favors, she’d kept her mouth shut. She’d not brought it up with anyone. She’d not reported it to the authorities. Which as they all seemed in on it was just as well.

  She’d answered sullen hostility with unflagging patience. She’d never failed to be polite or respectful.

  She’d been helpful when she could in as unassuming and non-intrusive way as she could.

  She’d worked hard and done everything she’d been told.

  She’d never complained.

  It hadn’t been enough. It was an understatement to say she was unhappy. She was devastated. What more could she have done?

  The Chief hadn’t said it explicitly, but he’d made an interesting point. He’d suggested that she didn’t have to do anything to cause trouble. He’d suggested that given her reputation that all she had to do was exist and be around and someone might react with fearful hostility.

  What the heck? How was she supposed to cope with that?

  She found herself tearing up with the unfairness of it. She felt trapped. Escape seemed impossible. She sobbed.

  She’d never done that before. She touched her face in wonder. She was crying.

  She couldn’t remember ever having done that before. Maybe that time when she was barely past being a toddler and whacked her knee on the edge of a hatch. There’d been actual blood. It’d taken weeks to heal. Still had a faint scar.

  It’d hadn’t been the pain that’d made her cry, though. It was the shock. The surprise that she could get hurt so easily out of the blue. Her father had kissed the knee better, and the fear had quickly faded. She’d learned to be careful though, and to always pay attention to safety. That had been the beginning of her obsession with safety rules.

  Now that she thought about it, she realized it was the closest she’d ever come to hardship or any sort of setback before. Her parents, as fey and feckless as they might seem to her at times, had kept her safe. She’d never really suffered disappointment, let alone grief or loss.

  The Commander was more than right. Not only was she inexperienced with people, she had no experience with failure or even disappointment. Her classmates on Ceres when she was here had left her alone after a few sharp lessons. She was not only smarter than all of them, she was stronger and faster too. She had no strong ties, so social shaming didn’t work. She went her own way. She got her own way. Always.

  She had no experience of failure or not getting what she wanted. She worked hard, true, but it’d always paid off for her before too.

  Before the line, her closest experience with setbacks and failure had been in the old out of copyright books her parents had bought her. They depicted a different world, a century at least out of date, and predominantly planet bound. The trials and tribulations of the fictional characters in them hadn’t seemed truly real to her. Also, they’d all eventually triumphed in the end.

  Obviously reality wasn’t like that, but it’d never really sunk in before.

  No wonder she’d annoyed her fellow workers on the line. Their entire lives seemed to be a string of disappointments, of poor choices that they simply had to accept the consequences of. Her blithe assumption things would always work out for her had to be irksome.

  Boy, she felt stupid.

  And not nasty, but obnoxious maybe.

  For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel good about being who she was.

  To be the cold and uncaring creature, she must look like to most people, it was a practical problem too.

  The Commander was right. Made her want to gag to admit it, but he was.

  She was practically ignorant about people. About the trials and tribulations they routinely faced most of all. It was something that had been bound to blow up in her face sooner or later. Particularly if she chose a career that meant dealing with people in crisis situations at times. She was profoundly ill suited to such a role.

  And she’d had no clue it was so.

  Maybe the Commander was right and she ought to give up the idea of joining the Space Force. Give up those other plans she didn’t like to contemplate in the privacy of her own mind, even given their arguably insane degree of ambition. She might be mental, but damned if she was going to admit it to anyone. Or let it stop her.

  There was a good reasonable argument for being practical and backing off. Of settling for a moderately successful career, doing something as a civilian business person in the Belt. The Commander, Calvin, and her parents all seemed to think it was a good idea.

  Only Sam hadn’t discouraged her, and he hadn’t precisely encouraged her either. Let her have her head was all. He seemed to think if you wanted something, you ought to try to go for it. Didn’t mean he thought it was necessarily a good idea, or that the chances of success were that good.

  Well, okay, she could accept she’d been blind and that she needed to pay more attention. Specifically, it seemed that being a hero required being a good politician, of always thinking about how anything you did might affect your reputation. Who’d have thought it?

  Didn’t mean you could avoid taking chances or always do the most popular thing. Did mean when you took chances or did something unpopular, you recognized the fact and had good reasons for it.

  She took a deep breath. She felt better now. Life made a sort of sense again. It was bleaker, more difficult, and not as nice as she’d thought, but it made sense again. She could do this. She could try, at least.

  She’d go to the Command
er and convince him to give her another chance. Maybe she’d talk it over with Sam first. She wished she could talk it over with Calvin too, but that didn’t seem likely. But starting right now, she was paying more attention to people and how they felt.

  She’d get her chance.

  She’d learn from it.

  * * *

  When he was much younger Yuri Tretyak had had a strip torn off of him by marine drill instructors and more senior cadets at the Academy from time to time. He’d had them walk up one side of him and down the other as the saying went. He’d thought he’d had a good idea of what it meant to be verbally bawled out. To be motivated to never incur such wrath again.

  He’d also thought he’d acquired a certain immunity to verbal abuse. An immunity he’d not needed for years and which he’d never expected to need again.

  Turned out he’d been wrong.

  He’d just come from a “discussion” with Police Chief Donald Dingle. Dingle had at no point raised his voice or employed profanity. The Commander still felt as if he’d been flayed and rolled in salt. Like he’d been shrunk, deflated, wrung out, and stomped all over.

  Chief Dingle had been scathing.

  Worse, he’d made it clear to Yuri that he thought he was letting him off easy. That he thought that Yuri had been stupid, not malicious. He’d been much more detailed in his lengthy and very clear exposition of that belief.

  As the Commander sat in his office staring at his desktop, absorbing what had been explained to him he found he really couldn’t disagree. It did nothing to make him feel better. It was going to be lunch soon. He had no appetite at all.

  Unfortunately since he was a creature of routine, his absence in the cafeteria would be noted. It would send the wrong signal. As much as he’d like to sit in his office licking his wounds it wasn’t behavior befitting of a Space Force officer.

  Sometimes being merely human wasn’t acceptable.

  Neither was blaming other people for his failures. He hadn’t mentioned Guy Boucher’s offer to keep an eye on Kincaid to the Chief. He didn’t intend to bring it up with Guy at lunch either. He did wonder what the hell had gone wrong.

  Katie Kincaid might not be his cup of tea, but she’d done nothing remotely worth being murdered for that he knew of.

  He didn’t for a skinny second believe that she deserved it or had done anything to directly provoke it.

  No, as unfair as it was the girl was likely the victim of her reputation for being smart and fearless. You’d think those be virtues and duly rewarded. Not if she’d noticed something somewhere someone wanted kept secret.

  He felt a stab of resentment. He had no idea what or who that could be. Neither as far as he could tell did the Chief. Which was unfortunate because between the two of them it was certainly the job of one or the other of them to know that. Probably given the entanglement of affairs of Ceres with those of the wider Belt in its vicinity, both of them were responsible. Attempted murder was no joke.

  Cold blooded attempted murder in such a small community was a huge risk and implied a commensurate fear of exposure. Someone somewhere had committed, maybe was still committing a crime that was so serious, that a risky attempt at murder seemed worth it. Worth it if it kept that crime from being revealed.

  And he had no idea what crime or who could be responsible. It was infuriating.

  Their best lead seemed to be the Kincaid girl herself. Only the Chief said she’d told him she had no idea who it could be or why. The Chief felt lying was one of the social skills she lacked and that she was telling the truth. Yuri had to agree.

  For a brief moment he instantly felt ashamed of Commander Yuri Tretyak entertained the notion that their best chance of catching the criminal was if they made another attempt on the Kincaid girls’ life. He didn’t quite get to the point of deliberately planning to use her as bait.

  But it would be wrong. He had to be frustrated to even have thought of it. He dearly wanted to wash his hands of the whole thing. Endorse the Kincaid girl’s application to the Academy. Sit and do nothing until she departed. Hoped it all worked out.

  That’d be irresponsible.

  It still wasn’t crystal clear the girl was capable of staying out of trouble. Also he was likely the one, however inadvertently, who had put her life in danger by having her work on the line. He owed her some protection.

  If he could find a task for her that was under Space Force control where Space Force personnel could keep an eye on her that might kill two birds with one stone.

  It was an idea. Seemed like a good one.

  Lunch time now.

  He was feeling better. Might be able to keep it down.

  * * *

  Calvin sat in his room and agonized over wording. Who’d have ever thought writing a simple message could be so much work?

  He’d been angry with Katie over her determination to pursue her quixotic quest to become a Space Force officer over settling down in the Belt like a reasonable woman.

  That had all vanished when he’d heard about the attempt on her life.

  He’d realized that although they were both young, that Katie had never failed to get what she wanted, if only she worked hard enough for it. It wasn’t that she was immature. She was simply inexperienced with having to compromise. He was sure that was something that would change with time. All he had to do was be patient.

  In any event, he knew how to compromise. Several older sisters and a whole clan full of nosy relatives that all felt entitled to make decisions for one ensured that. Also in a case of life or death involving someone he cared about, it wasn’t his feelings that counted.

  With her parents off on a long survey tour with no way they could quickly return, Katie was alone on Ceres. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal, but if someone was trying to kill her for some reason something had to be done. He still couldn’t imagine why, but if someone was trying to kill her, she needed to be somewhere safer than a school dormitory room. Anybody could access those with a little cunning. Automated systems provided some protection, but they weren’t the same as living people keeping an eye out for you.

  So he’d asked his parents and his sisters if they’d be willing to help. If one of his sisters would be willing to move in with one of the others and give her room to Katie. In the Cromwell family apartments surrounded in the gravity ring by the rest of the clan and other mining clans, no intruder would go unremarked. Katie would be safe in the Cromwell family home.

  They’d agreed immediately. Nobody had ever felt entirely comfortable with the way her parents let Katie run free on Ceres with nobody around to watch out for her. However, she’d always seemed to manage on her own. Also, Sam Williamson and Calvin and his family had always kept something of an eye on her informally. That didn’t cut it if someone was out to hurt or kill her.

  It was hard to believe, but the facts spoke for themselves. There’d been at least a half dozen workers on shift when Johnny Applebaum got killed at Katie’s station. The rumors had spread quick and wide.

  And so Katie had a safe place available now. All he had to do was somehow convince her to take advantage of it, despite their having not parted on the best of terms the last time he’d seen her.

  In the end, he decided to keep it simple.

  “Katie,” he wrote, “my family has a room here available for you. It’ll be much safer with people around to watch out for bad guys if you take advantage of it. Whatever you or me think or feel, it’s only sensible you take advantage of this offer. It’s hard to believe, but it looks like somebody dangerous has targeted you. Please don’t make it easy for them. Yours most sincerely, Calvin.”

  He pushed “send”, hoping she’d listen to reason.

  * * *

  Sam was feeling as alarmed as he’d ever had.

  Sam had made entries into the lairs of armed criminals that’d worried him less than the news about the fatal accident on the processing line. The one that had apparently been intended for Katie.

  Katie had
n’t talked to him about her tiff with Calvin. Sam had heard about it all the same through round about channels. Ceres was a small, isolated and rather in bred community after all. News traveled fast. Gossip traveled faster.

  He wasn’t in general a fan of gossip. In this case, he was happy to have heard about it. He was happy someone cared about the girl other than him. Katie’s parents did he was sure, but they weren’t anywhere nearby and not all that effectual in their concern when they were. Nice people, but they had their heads stuck firmly up their butts.

  Sam was also happy Katie had called to say she was coming by to talk. At least she had some inkling she was out of her depth and was open to advice to some degree. Speak of the devil.

  Katie bounced into his machinist’s shop with an approximation of her normal energy and verve. Sadly, he could tell she was faking it to some degree.

  “Hey, Katie. How’s it going?” he greeted her.

  “Could be better,” she admitted.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “You heard about the accident on the processing line?” she asked.

  “I imagine all of Ceres has heard by now,” Sam answered. “Way I heard it, someone tried to kill you and got Johnny Applebaum instead. People are shocked there’s a killer free here. They don’t know if the idea a crazy is loose worries them more, or if the idea someone’s hiding something worth killing over does.”

  “Bet they think it’s my fault somehow,” Katie said. She failed to keep her bitterness hidden. Not right up front, but it was detectable.

  “Wherever you are trouble seems to find you,” Sam replied. “Not fair, and not your fault, I think, but it does seem to be the case. People can’t help take notice.”

  “Why, Sam?” she asked. “Am I like a blind bull in a china shop? I mean, I see now that I haven’t been paying enough attention to the other people around me. I’m going to try hard to pay more attention. Only down on the processing line I did my job, just my job. I didn’t get any attacks of initiative and try to do more. I kept my mouth shut except to say ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘yes, sir’ and things like that. Even if I was a blind bull in a china shop, I was careful not to move around and knock anything over. I was a very still and quiet bull. Yet somehow despite doing almost nothing someone seems to have got so spooked they decided they had to get rid of me permanently. It’s insane.”