by David Ryker
With every passing intersection the temperature rose incrementally, creeping up toward zero on my screen. We saw droids milling around before we saw anything with blood pumping in its veins. Telmareen wasn’t an inherently inhabited planet, and for the most part now, the species that did live there were a lot larger than humans, which was why the Federation used mechs and droids, to even the odds. It was only specific settlements and colonies that were humanoid-centric. Genesis had been one such planet. Geared up for humans and humanoids with doors and living spaces just that much smaller than everywhere else. But Telmareen wasn’t a Federation colony originally and had only been humanized over the last century or two. The species that had settled here first was a lot bigger than the Federation would have liked.
New settlements were always easier with smaller species, and humans were puny in comparison to most of the things roaming the universe. The Federation dealt a lot in humanoids — we’re easy to breed and to keep. A humanoid requires a lot less space and food than larger species. We’re intelligent for our size and reasonably reserved, too, it seems. Apparently not very strong willed, either. The origins of the Federation are millennia old — tens of millennia, hundreds even, buried in the histories of the universe. One race of humanoid-type creatures evolved beyond their planet and colonized one, and then another, and then another. Then came the discovery of Iskcara and what it could do — and the universe suddenly got a lot smaller. Hyperdrives went into production and then the mass-colonization began. Other civilizations were found, brought into the fold, and everything was smooth sailing. Evolutions and permutations began to set in — genetic engineering, natural and unnatural changes, crossbreeding… Things got big, and when things get big, they get hard to control. One planet wants to live by one rule, another by another. And when you can’t ask politely anymore, you get the stick. I smirked for a second, thinking back to what Alice had said about her father on the destroyer, on a ‘peacekeeping’ mission. Showing them the stick, she’d said. And that was it — the Federation went from being a peaceful group of planets to being an intergalactic military. Natural progression, I guess.
Some say the Free were around long before that, and that they were just minding their own business until one day the Federation decided to colonize the wrong planet, and all it took for a blood feud that had split the universe in two to evolve was one person who decided to say no. No one quite knows where the Free came from, or if they’re even a group — some say that there’s the Federation, and then there’s everyone else, and if you’re not in one, then you’re the other. You’re either with the Federation, or you’re Free, and you’re against them. I didn’t really believe in blacks and whites like that. Good thing I was getting used to wearing grey, then.
“Maddox?” Volchec’s voice rang in the cabin.
“Yeah?” I said suddenly, snapping out of my train of thought.
“You’re off comms. Why?” She’d patched straight into Greg’s transmission system.
“Sorry, I had something in my throat, was coughing my guts up,” I lied. “Didn’t think they’d want to hear that.” I touched behind my ear and the commline opened again. Mac was talking to Alice, telling her about Telmareen and the last time he’d been there.
“Alright, well, stay plugged in, okay? We need to stay sharp.”
“Major.” Truth was, I liked the peace and quiet, the solitude in the cockpit. The isolation. I wondered sometimes what it was like to be in a womb, protected. I’d never had one. I was grown in a glass tube. My first memory was of a distorted blue world when they electrified the oxy-gel and it snapped me out of the long sleep — what tubers call everything that came before. Not many people know, but tubers aren’t pulled out of their pods until they’re the equivalent age of a five-year-old. Apparently it’s the optimum time for learning and integration into society, and having a million screaming babies to raise wasn’t anyone’s idea of an ideal colony. Opening your eyes for the first time already knowing what the world is and how it works is such a fucked-up feeling — like being made and programmed, not born. I remember that first memory clearly, even now. During the long sleep, the Federation map the brain and upload information directly into it. You come out knowing how things work — who you are, and what you’re meant for. I grimaced at the thought. You can’t speak, can’t stand, can’t hold your shit in. You’re all tears and floppy arms. You’ve got to learn to walk and talk and make your mouth form the words you’re already saying in your head. Most people have no idea what it’s like for a tuber to grow up — or to be reared, as they like to call it. I scoffed at the thought. I’d belonged to them from the second I was ripped out of the darkness and dumped onto that cold steel grate, feeling the jelly spasm and shoot out of my lungs as I coughed it up, crying, cold, with the only womb I’d ever known looming above me, door open and spilling its lukewarm gelatinous guts all over me, men in white coats hosing me down, pressing monitors and sensors against my skin, jabbing me with needles, flashing lights in my eyes, holding my mouth open and inspecting my teeth like I was livestock. I remembered it all, and though being inside a mech, or inside my Blower was like being back in the tube again, it was somehow like filling a void — it’s an inexplicable thing, to feel a longing for something you’ve never had; but that’s all my life seemed to be.
“Red, you with us?” Mac was facing me.
I’d zoned out again. I couldn’t shake this feeling. I was all over the place. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“We should head to Barva’s apartment. It’s not far.”
“Wait,” I said, not really thinking. “I’ll… I’m going to follow up a lead.”
Mac stopped and turned his HAM around. The last snowflakes fell around us. “A lead? Where the hell did you get a lead, eh?”
“I was doing some digging,” I started, realizing now that I was having to pitch it to the others that it was paper-thin. “And, it’s not much — but there’s a warehouse a little way from here with a direct run to a spaceport. There’ve been no arrests by the Civil Guard between the two in the last few weeks — total blank spot — straight line. I’m thinking maybe—”
“The Guard aren’t arresting there because they’re avoiding it?” It was Alice’s voice in my ear, terse, like she was thinking. “Because they’re being paid to by whoever’s moving the Iskcara?” The inflection at the end said she was asking herself as much as us.
Mac piped up. “Volchec?”
“I’m here,” Volchec said over the airwaves.
“What do you think?” Mac asked. He was leading us on the ground it seemed — it only made sense. He had seniority.
She sighed after a second. “I dunno, maybe it’s a leap, but we haven’t really got anything else to go on at this point.” She groaned and I could hear her rubbing her forehead.
“I’ll go,” I said quietly. “Check it out. If it looks off, I’ll call you guys in. It won’t take four of us to search Barva’s apartment.”
“Alright,” Volchec said after a second. “Maddox, you check out the warehouse.”
“Okay.”
“And Kepler, you go with him,” she added.
“What?” we both asked at the same time.
“But—” Kepler started.
“No buts. We’re on the clock here, people. Mac and Fish have been working together for a long time — they know how to look out for one another. You and Maddox came up through the academy together, too.”
“I hardly think—” Kepler started.
“I’m not asking you to think, Kepler. This is an order.”
She fell quiet, and even though she was across the road in her rig, I could tell it was a sullen silence. If anything I wasn’t really happy about it either. I’d made my mind up to just give her space, and then when she could stand to look at me, apologize then. Otherwise it would just be useless groveling. She already hated me. I didn’t want her to think I was pathetic, too.
I swallowed. “Alright, we’ll head over, then.”
There was silence from Alice, but she turned and stepped slowly toward me.
“We’ll get up to Barva’s, see what’s what, and then radio in. If anything goes sideways, call and we’ll come running,” Mac said.
“Thanks,” I replied.
His HAM faced me for a moment, and then turned away and sidled off up the street, bow-legged and squat like a gorilla.
I had Greg plot a course to the warehouse and beam the route over to Alice’s rig. She’d not said a word, and even when I spoke into the air, I couldn’t hear her breathe, so I guessed she’d killed the link. I toggled it off behind my ear and sighed. The walk wasn’t far, but it wasn’t going to be any fun.
The warehouse was in an industrial section wedged between a mineral refinery and a steel mill. We backtracked a little into the cold side of the city and made our way down, with the temperature hanging at around minus six by the time we reached it. It was accessible via an entry road that was gated about a hundred meters from the doors, which were large enough to accommodate a transport, driven by something pretty sizeable. I turned and stared down the dirt road stretching away from the gates. It peeled off left and right at intersections, but otherwise, it was a straight shot to a colossal domed structure in the distance — Sazaaron Spaceport. All they’d have to do is roll it out of the gate and head straight there. Hell, wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. I chewed my tongue thinking it over. There was no such thing as day and night on Telmareen, but there was a global schedule — the whole planet ran on Federation standard time, thirty equal chunks, to give everyone some sort of semblance of normality.
It was getting on in the day, but the refinery was still churning. The mill had shut up, it seemed, and the warehouse was dead.
“Greg, can you run a scan for me? Infrared, sonic, whatever you think?” I asked, walking over next to Alice. The gate was rusted, but heavy duty. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while, but maybe it was supposed to. I glanced left and then right. Hinges made it swing out. I gritted my teeth and backed up, kneeling down.
“What are you doing?” Alice asked suddenly, turning to face me.
I brushed some of the snow away from the roadway and ran my finger along a groove I’d exposed that arced from the gate. “Drag marks,” I mumbled.
“Maddox?”
I touched behind my ear. “Sorry. Drag marks, look.” I pointed to the grooves. “This gate’s been opened recently. Think it’s just meant to look like it hasn’t.”
“Yeah, and it’s not just any gate, either. It’s a pretty high-grade carbide tungsten alloy. Not your run of the mill crap, and it certainly didn’t come from there.” She swung her arm toward the steel mill. “It’s been tarnished intentionally to look like it’s been here for years. And look at this — the locking mechanism. It’s an electronic deadlock. Biometric, too. No handle — this thing’s meant to keep people out, and I’d bet that if we tried to put it through, we’d have some company very quickly.”
I pursed my lips and stood up. It was good to have something to talk about. We could shove everything between us to the side and concentrate on the mission. I remembered what Volchec said, that we needed to have each other's backs. That we were a team. And if Alice could have gotten out of it, she would have, but she was stuck with me, and she was dealing with it. For that I was thankful. “Greg, anything on those scans?”
“Negative. It appears that there is some sort of resistant cladding on the inner surface of the walls that’s preventing my scans from penetrating,” he said carefully.
I heard Alice click her tongue against her teeth. “Iskcara’s a pretty radioactive element and throws a lot of radiation, even when it’s shelled. Can you tell what the cladding is made of?”
“Greg?” I asked.
“I would only be speculating, but most Iskcara transports use an osmium-lead alloy to line their cargo holds and crates.”
“Can you check if there have been any large purchases of that in the last few months? Enough to line a warehouse this size?”
“It will take a while, but there is no guarantee that my speculation is correct about the material. Furthermore, it would be a poor decision on the part of the person stealing the Iskcara to purchase large quantities of the material used to prevent radiation leakage.”
I sighed. “Can you just do it?”
“Yes.” He went quiet and started searching, but he was right. It was a needle in a thousand haystacks. If I was skimming off the Federation, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to buy a whole load of that stuff — or even associate with anyone who had. I slipped my hand out of the glove and pushed my helmet against my forehead, rubbing it back and forth to scratch an itch.
“Well, we can’t just break in,” Alice said airily. “Whether it’s suspicious or not, we’ve got no probable cause, no jurisdiction, and no protection. You heard Volchec, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile. And, if this is the right place, and we do bust in there, and even if we find any Iskcara, which I doubt we will, because who the hell leaves stolen hyperdrive fuel just lying around — and we don’t get killed by whoever shows up to protect it, that’s if they’re not already in there, watching us right now, fingers on triggers, ready to—”
“Can you get to the point?” I cut in.
“They’d just bolt. They’d disappear and we’d never find them. And then in a few months, or years, they’d set up the operation again — probably on the other side of the planet. And it’d all be for nothing. I just checked — the warehouse is registered to a company that operates on about a million planets, and owns a few of its own. They’re a galactic shipping company. They own forty other warehouses in this zone alone — and more than nine hundred around the planet.” She drew a slow breath, maybe deciding if she wanted to say the next thing or not. “It was a good lead — but it didn’t pan out. Let’s head back and meet up with Mac and Fish, and go from there.”
I swallowed. “Or… we could get a drink?”
“Excuse me?” She sounded genuinely pissed off.
“I didn’t want to say it before, because it was even thinner than the warehouse, but there’s a bar — not far from here — could be another lead.” It sounded stupid when I said it out loud.
“And how exactly is a bar a lead?” she scoffed.
“Well, I figure that the sellers are going to have to meet the buyers somewhere — a bar is public, it’s nearby, there’s a direct route from there to here, and there aren’t any arrests on that line either. Look, I’m not saying it’s perfect, but…”
She breathed quietly, thinking about it. “So what’s your plan? We just waltz in there, ask if anyone’s selling any Iskcara and then what, flash our badges when we find our man?”
“You got a badge?”
“It’s just an expression.”
“No — I don’t know. I mean, I thought we’d just take a look, see what’s going on. We can set Greg up on one end of the buildings, and — wait, does your rig have a name?”
She groaned. “No. Now, get back to this stupid explanation so I can tell you how stupid it is and then we can get out of here.”
“Alright, well you leave yours on the other side, and then they can both run sonic scans — pick up some chatter maybe, clean it up between them and feed it to us inside. If anything comes out in the wash, we’ll report back. Simple as that.” I realized my voice sounded just a little more pathetic than I meant it to.
“This isn’t some ploy to—”
“No, it’s not. I swear.” It really wasn’t.
She dragged it out for as long as she could, and then opened a comm link. “Major?”
“Kepler.”
“What do you think?”
“MacAlister just radioed in saying that Barva’s apartment was a bust, but they found some paperwork that said he’d rented a garage about a click east of where you guys are right now,” she said. “Don’t know what it’ll amount to, though. I’d say go for it. We haven’t got much else to go on at this point
.”
Alice’s line went dead suddenly. She’d taken herself off comms. Maybe she was asking her rig if it was soundproof, too.
12
The bar was a shithole.
The building was an ex-industrial block of concrete and steel wedged between the factories and the part of the city where the residential housing started. All around it were apartment blocks that blotted out what meager sun found its way to the doorstep, so despite being over the dawn-line, it was still below freezing.
The entrance was through an old loading dock. A concrete plinth jutted onto the dirty roadway and was covered by a corrugated metal awning. A set of steps led onto it and through a sliding doorway big enough to accommodate our mech, four humans stacked up, or any of the other huge species we’d seen trotting around. It was easy to forget just how small humans were in comparison to most species in the galaxy. Earth was a reasonably low-gravity planet, with a bland atmospheric makeup, and coupled with the fact that we were pretty far back in our evolution when we got off-world and started branching out into the great dark ocean of space, it made humans one of the smallest common-species in the Federation. Though that didn’t mean that we were the only life forms that enjoyed a little imbibement. No, it seemed that most species had discovered the art of fermentation long before we had — though we did claim credit for inventing beer — at least good beer, and it seemed to catch on in a big way all across the galaxy.
We parked our rigs around the corner and hopped out, instructing them to head to opposite ends of the building and keep an ear out.
On the way over, I’d quizzed Greg on something, and now that Alice and I were heading over on foot, I was contemplating doing something stupid. I bit my lip, eyeing her, trying to gauge her demeanor. I would have gone with icy, but I was still pretty sure I was going to go ahead with what I had planned.
We headed up the steps, which required us to climb each one, and onto the plinth in front of the door. I didn’t know what the hell was going to be waiting for us inside, so it had to be now.