“That’s it?” Katie asked. “That’s all?”
“No,” the Chief answered, “it’s not. For one, we’re going to have to take you into protective custody for a while until we’ve secured Guy and all of his accomplices.”
“Including the crew of the Sand Piper,” the Commander said. “That’s one of my tasks.” Not one he looked happy about.
“I’m sorry about that, sir,” Katie said.
“Yes, but the less said about it the better,” the Commander replied.
“In fact, you shouldn’t volunteer any information even to me or the Commander,” the Chief said. “You shouldn’t discuss any of it with anybody else at all. Not with Chief Williamson, not with Calvin Cromwell, not with your parents, not with anyone. This is going to be an ongoing investigation for some time. I strongly suspect for security reasons most of the details will end up classified. To that end, we believe our superiors will be happy to overlook any technical legal infractions on your part in exchange for your discretion. Understood?”
Katie in an ideal world would have liked to have believed a lawyer and an open legal investigation would have been better. She wasn’t at all sure that was true in reality. She’d settle for trusting the two men had both her best interests and that of the public in mind. “Yes, sir,” she responded.
“Good. Let’s find you a decent place to get cleaned up and rested.”
Sounded good to Katie.
* * *
Guy had a temper.
It’d flared when he realized what was happening.
Guy had felt great satisfaction when Marvin had come calling with the news they’d captured the Kincaid girl and she was being dealt with. He didn’t believe in counting his chickens before they were fully hatched just the same. He’d sent Marvin, along with his escort, back to Billy with a message that they were to remain on site and not to do anything before Guy got there. From what Marvin had said Guy suspected the girl had been collecting data electronically and Guy would have also bet his bottom credit her disappearance would be swiftly followed up. He had to make sure that follow up didn’t find anything.
Guy followed behind Marvin and the other kid after barely five minutes. He’d sensed something was wrong even before he saw them detained. There’d been too many officers of the Space Force and police around and all heading in the same direction.
The gig was up.
And so Guy was angry. Not normally so. It wasn’t the cracking under a load of frustration and exasperation hot sort of anger that expressed itself in violence against things, and at times people, he felt.
No, it was the intense anger of being in immediate danger. The cold controlled intensely focused and utterly ruthless anger that scared even him in his calmer, more rational moods.
The ruthless anger that told him Billy was a lost cause. The anger that told him he wasn’t too old to have other children. The one that informed him he needed to be someone else, somewhere else, and that he needed to move on that need now.
Guy had escape plans, of course.
His implacably cold pragmatic anger told him he needed to use the riskier one of them. The slower, more uncomfortable and costly one.
Ceres was too small, and he was too well known there. He had to leave. He had a plan in place to replace a regular crewman on one of the transports that plied a route in system. It was one that would have stood up to regular scrutiny. It would have been a rather boring, but not uncomfortable trip back to the vicinity of Earth and the substantial back up resources he’d stashed there.
Guy didn’t allow himself the luxury of thinking that plan would work.
No, he was going to have to take a position on a small cramped mining rig owned and manned by some truly disgusting reprobates. Ones hopefully rational enough to realize they’d get paid more in the end if they didn’t try to back stab him.
Then it’d be many months in space in cramped quarters and a complicated, uncertain path back to the inner system. Who could be sure what assets would survive his being out of contact for all that time? It certainly wouldn’t increase his political capital with his associates back on Earth.
Still, it was the best choice.
Chief Dingle and the Commander would both be looking for him. They’d soon have the whole rock locked down hard.
And so, Guy was on his way to the seediest part of Ceres, where he knew he’d find the men he needed.
It should work out, and with time and effort he’d rebuild.
Guy would be more careful this time.
Among other things, he’d keep an eye out for Katie Kincaid.
He had a feeling the little girl was going to make a big splash.
* * *
Commander Tretyak was nibbling at a spicy faux chicken wrap. It was a very late lunch he was enjoying in his office. Reacting to the mess Katie Kincaid had found in the warehouse district had consumed most of his day so far, including his regular lunch hour.
The Commander had very mixed feelings about the whole thing now that he had had a little time to think about it. That his friend Guy Boucher had turned out to be a crook, not just a smuggler, but one who’d at least attempted murder hurt. He hadn’t enjoyed having to put the crew of the Sand Piper under house arrest either. As for his career, well, it was just as well he enjoyed his position here on Ceres.
That their dragnet had yet to dredge up Guy was cause for concern. He assumed the man couldn’t have gone far. They had after all sealed off the entire base as soon as they’d realized the magnitude of what the Kincaid girl had found. So, he expected they’d find Guy sooner or later, but he’d have felt better if the man wasn’t still at large.
Oddly, he felt more sad than angry about the whole thing. Embarrassed, too. He’d had a certain view of the SDF and the people here on Ceres, and it’d now turned out it’d been wrong. Turned out that he’d been naïve. It made him sad that the world wasn’t as a nice of a place as he’d thought. He could cope though, and he didn’t blame anyone for it. He didn’t blame himself that much either. Given a choice between naïve and cynical, he’d still chose naïve.
The Commander did regret not catching the situation earlier. In particular, he regretted the hard time he’d given the Kincaid girl.
He still thought she’d be a source of disruption in the Space Force. Only now he was inclined to think that might not be a bad thing.
He was annoyed at the Space Force right now and at SFHQ in particular. As soon as he’d realized there was proof of Kincaid’s allegations this time he’d informed SFHQ with a highest priority message.
Their immediate reaction had been to ask him to keep the whole matter as confidential as possible. There was an old adage that sunlight is the best disinfectant. He wasn’t convinced, but the bureaucracy’s inclination to bury the news of anything and everything it might find embarrassing didn’t impress him.
It did mean that the Kincaid girl was likely not going to be held here on Ceres and subjected to a whole series of awkward questions. The leadership of the Space Force doubtless understood it wouldn’t like the answers that’d be made public as a result of that.
It should leave him free to give her a solid endorsement to her Academy application.
In the meantime, her initiative meant he had a lot of paperwork to fill out. He’d be here well into the evening.
* * *
Calvin’s family were giving him a lot of room.
It’d taken most of the day, but by the time supper time had rolled around the rumors had solidified. Katie Kincaid had found something down in the warehouse district. The police and Space Force MPs were both all over it. Guy Boucher, the crew of the Sand Piper, and Kincaid herself were nowhere to be found. The consensus of the rumor mongers was that Kincaid had found proof of her earlier accusations. It was the talk of the rock.
One of Calvin’s sisters had breathlessly relayed the entire story to the family over dinner.
Calvin’s first reaction had been one of joy and relief for Katie. His
happiness was only somewhat moderated by concern for Katie’s safety and the risks he didn’t doubt she’d taken. His sister had insisted that only Billy and some of his buddies were in the hospital though, so that was good.
Then the implications of the whole thing began to sink in and his mood had rapidly soured.
Calvin’s mother had quietly told him he was excused his clean up duties and suggested he might want some personal time. She’d waved the rest of the family away with sharp gestures.
Calvin had thought Katie’s hopes unrealistic. He’d figured that once she realized that she’d look at both the idea of remaining in the Belt and him differently. He’d been wrong on the first count. He shivered. He wondered if he’d been wrong on the second too. Would she have left the Belt and him anyways, even if she hadn’t got into the Academy?
It bothered him that he hadn’t trusted her judgment. That he’d been hoping for her to fail. He didn’t feel good about that.
Calvin had never doubted her honesty. Meant the smugglers were real. Meant she’d most likely emerge a hero from this. A hero the Commander had been unfair to. The Commander would be falling all over himself to make amends. Odds were her Academy endorsement was in the bag. Assuming she’d got through whatever had happened in one piece.
There was no clear publicly available information about what had happened down in the warehouse district. Technically, he didn’t know where Katie was. She could have been hurt or even killed.
He didn’t think so.
Katie was a survivor. Somehow he was convinced that however battered she might be, she had survived.
When the dust settled, he couldn’t help thinking she’d be on her way to the Academy and out of his life.
Calvin was happy for her.
He was sad for himself.
He felt bad about that, but it was what it was.
He remembered some silly book they’d all been made to read about a seagull. It’d said something saccharine about letting what you loved go free.
It’d made no sense to him at the time. Now he understood.
Who’d have thought insight could be so painful?
Where to go from here? Well, if he was hurting he had to think Katie was feeling pretty battered emotionally too. It may have worked out in the end for her. He hoped and thought so, but she’d been through a lot.
So as much as it hurt at times he’d be a good friend.
Calvin would let her know he was happy for her.
Support her any way he could.
Like any good friend would.
15: Katie Endorsed
Katie resolved never to get sent to prison. She didn’t take confinement and not having anything to do at all well.
The quarters the Commander had arranged for her were not luxurious, but they were comfortable, and more than adequate. Designed for transient Space Force officers they were in fact much nicer than her school dorm room.
Unfortunately, besides a limited standard set of entertainment programs and some games, there wasn’t much to do in them except rest. She wasn’t allowed to communicate with anyone. She couldn’t even let her parents know she was okay. The Commander had assured her he’d pass on the news but that it was critical the details of what had happened not get out.
He’d said it was because they needed to try to catch as much as Guy Boucher’s criminal network by surprise as possible.
When she’d first got here, she hadn’t minded much.
She’d been too tired.
She’d fallen on the bed as soon as she’d been left alone. Not undressed or crawled under the covers or cleaned up or eaten, just fallen on the bed and slept for most of eight hours straight. She’d then woken up long enough to shower and change into some brand new pajamas that had been left for her.
There’d been snacks too. She wondered she’d been so dead to the world that she’d not noticed their being delivered.
Not for long, she’d scoffed some of them down and gone right back to bed for a few more hours. She’d never realized it was possible to have an appetite for sleep before.
Now it was the early hours of the day after her adventure down in the warehouse district. She didn’t feel like sleeping anymore.
She was alone with herself.
Chief of Police Dingle and Commander Tretyak were the only people she was allowed to talk to. They were doubtless getting some well deserved sleep.
There was no one to talk to but herself. Her unconscious mind had begun the process. The first eight hours or so of her sleep had been the deep sleep of physical exhaustion. More akin to a coma than normal sleep. Later, she’d recovered to the point of having fitful dreams about her experiences of the last few weeks.
Her dreams had featured graveyards. She’d stumbled about in them. Lost. It hadn’t been nightmarish. The pervading emotion hadn’t been fear. Not even apprehension. Her feelings had included frustration. The dominant theme, however, had been puzzlement.
There’d been a particular gravestone she needed to find. Weirdly not that of a person. No, she’d been looking for where her application to the Academy was buried. Somehow, if she could find it and read the inscription on it, she knew she could resurrect it.
Dreams were strange, she couldn’t help thinking.
But as odd as they were, those dreams didn’t come from nowhere. Somewhere in the back of her head she was trying to make sense of all that had happened.
When she thought about it, she felt silly. It was obvious. Graveyards were her mnemonic device for remembering safety manuals.
Was there a safety manual for life? One for Academy applications? Not likely, but that’s what she’d been looking for. She was a spacer. A conscientious, hard-working crew member on a spaceship. Had been for her whole young life. She lived by her safety manuals.
Her parents were nominally her superiors and her mentors. In reality compared to her they were amateurs. Born and brought up on Earth, they’d learned how to be spacers, rock rats, as adults. It was why so many of the other rock rats and Belters couldn’t take them seriously.
To people brought up in space, they gave the impression of playing at being spacers.
It occurred to Katie that this was tremendously unfair. That her mother and father had learned a difficult and dangerous profession despite being ill prepared and done a creditable job of it. One for which they failed to get credit for. Not even from her. It embarrassed her to realize that. She resolved to be more appreciative in the future.
Be that as it may, it was beside the point. This wasn’t about them. It was about her.
Another realization. She’d never taken her time on Ceres seriously. The mandatory stints on Ceres had been vacations from her real duties for her. Ouch. Blind and stupid of her, considering her future depended on how she performed while on Ceres.
While on board the Dawn Threader, she had responsibilities. She had her safety manuals to tell her what those were. On Ceres, her responsibilities had been limited. The explicit safety manuals for them much more so.
Yet another realization. She’d made up implicit manuals of rules to follow in lieu of explicit ones provided by others. Having decided on an explicit set of rules to follow, she hadn’t been very flexible. Not flexible in her own behavior. Not flexible in her understanding of and sympathy for other people’s behavior.
Was there a manual for apologizing to all and sundry for being a clueless brat? She could use one right about now. She wished she was still tired. She’d have liked the excuse for crawling back into bed. Crawling back into bed and hiding there for the rest of eternity.
Another learning experience, she now had a much better idea of the difference between physical and moral courage. In fact, she could now break moral courage down into intellectual and emotional courage. Katie was convinced she had plenty of physical courage and intellectual courage too. Yesterday she would have said she had plenty of emotional courage.
Today, not so much. Today it occurred to her she’d been armored in ignoran
ce and a moral certitude dependent upon on it. Now that ignorance was showing cracks and the moral certitude was melting away.
Now she was having to face up to the fact she’d behaved badly. She’d been rigid and arrogant with everybody she’d ever known, with her parents, with her teachers, with her fellow students, and with her friends. She wondered that they, Calvin and Sam in particular, had been willing to put up with her.
Guess she must have some compensating qualities. That was nice. The thought she owed them all extensive apologies, and she had no idea where to begin, was not.
The realization that she was afraid of having to face them and make those apologies was also not pleasant.
Sam would joke about it.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” he’d say. He’d have no patience with all this angst. She was going to miss him. Her parents hadn’t done as poorly by her as she’d been inclined to think, but she hated to think what her life would have been like without Sam. If he hadn’t set up shop on Ceres or been willing to humor a girl left there on her own, she’d have no clues at all.
She didn’t know how she could ever repay him. Suspected she couldn’t.
Guess all she could do was try to pay it forward.
Try to do better in the future.
There that was a plan.
The start of one, anyway.
* * *
Commander Tretyak hadn’t had much sleep. He felt good, ready to face the day, despite that. A few hours’ rest, a hot shower, and a clean uniform can do wonders.
On one level, the day hadn’t started well. A quick video chat check in with Chief of Police Dingle revealed that Guy Boucher remained at large. It was beginning to look like he’d had a contingency plan for being discovered. If so, they’d likely lost him. Along with a good fraction of his more important collaborators. Most of the names they had were those of the smaller fish who didn’t know much.
Chief Dingle had some hopes of getting some circumstantial evidence out of Marvin Minakowski and Billy Boucher as they’d been around enough to pick up things. On the other hand, Guy had obviously had the sense not to tell them more than he had to.
Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One Page 21