“Hit me with it.”
I got up and washed my dishes then went into my room to change into my armor, placing a little plate of sliced bananas on the little ledge I put by the hole Graz and her family had bored into the drawer front of my nightstand.
There was a buzzing sound and when I stepped out from behind my changing screen in my armor, the plate was virtually scoured clean. I had to grin at the high pitched, pleased voices I heard coming from the drawer.
My quarters being in the A-Ring, there was an over abundance of fruits and vegetables in the markets since eighty percent of the population here were Fae, nineteen percent Elf, and one percent a smattering of other races... oh, and one human thank you very much. So I had quite a lot of fruits and veggies in my kitchen as Fae don't eat meat.
There was an Elvish butcher shop just a stone's throw away from the spoke terminal structures where my quarters were. In the lakeside town of Londeithel by the Forest of Evening Shadow, where this stack's Wood Elves lived. It was just about the only place I could get meat up here, without having to venture down-ring for a decent steak. An Elven friend of mine, J'real Leafwalker of House Thule of the Elves... it was surreal that a prince of elves was my friend now, shared the butcher shop location with me.
J'real, or Jay as his friends call him, shamelessly competes with me for Aurora's hand, I'd be jealous if he didn't flirt relentlessly with me and Rory's personal assistant, Nyx, as well. As my girl puts it, “He's a helpless flirt.” By the lords of the cosmos, I'd just called Rory my girl, and I'm grinning like a loon about it.
I placed my helmet on so I could get a heads up view of the information Mother was sharing with me instead of looking down at my wrist console. I loved the enhanced heads up of my new armor as opposed to the limited heads up my old armor had. Since there was a neural interface with this new helmet, it was as if my visual space had been multiplied, and multiple displays could be shown just beyond where my normal peripheral vision should have stopped, and it was crystal clear there, like it were directly in front of me.
I'm told that if I got a data port or com jack implant, the capabilities of the helmet went up exponentially, but for some reason I'm reticent to do that. I know it is silly, but I pride myself on being one hundred percent unmodded human. I'm what they call a double-aught. Zero augments, zero cybernetic implants.
But now I know I'm about as modded as it is possible to be, at least genetically since my genetic makeup was designed from the ground up by none other than my girlfriend. It still doesn't quite compute in my head that she is over five thousand years old.
I furrowed my brow at the information Mother was showing me. It seems that this year's government budget proposals included a request for more funding for the External Maintenance Crew modernization and salary increase for the lifers to compensate for inflation.
It had been put in by Max, along with a detailed proposal to update the External Maintenance systems and procedures which haven't changed since Exodus. It was a hide bound agency like so many others that haven't kept up with modern day evolution and overhauls of shipboard operations.
He suggested that it would increase efficiency and morale of the workers, and stem turnover if they had additional funds in their budget to hire more permanent workers so they didn't have to do so much overtime or hire so many day workers.
I cocked an eyebrow, it seemed to be a no brainer to me. Max had already streamlined his stack, imagine what he could do with the proper budget for all the stacks. He made a hell of a lot of sense, and his budget request wasn't out of line or astronomical compared to some of the administration raises that were submitted from other departments.
Then I saw what Mother was eluding to as possible motive. The Greater Fae... the Summer Court, had requested a similar amount, just five percent more than the External Maintenance Crew request, for a water feature and pedestrian mall in Gamma-B as capital improvements to the other Stack under the control of the Summer Court.
It was a frivolous request, as it did nothing for the infrastructure or management of the world. It would just make the upper rings even more elite, separating the races and classes just a bit more by giving their upper class citizens yet another beautiful space to add to their paradises.
Then, as one would suspect, bowing to the Fae and not wanting to make any waves, the budget committees approved the Fae request while denying Max's since they didn't have the budget to do both. The tragedy of it was that instead of increasing the External Maintenance Crew salaries, they reduced them to absorb the five percent capital they needed to grant the Fae's budget request.
So not only did Max not get the improvements, now they were getting paid less, the workers had to do more, since the budget for day workers decreased as well by the same percentage. While the people who take the risks out in hard vacuum, maintain the Skin for everyone on the world, construction on the water feature and pedestrian mall have just finished up in Gamma-B.
That was the definition of unfair. And as much as I fault them for it, it was how our society worked here on the Leviathan. The Fae are basically in charge by proxy, since without them, the Worldship would not be possible. Though every square inch of the hull was covered in photovoltaic paint that harvested every photon and even cosmic radiation from the stars at ninety-eight percent efficiency, and the fission reactors run with a dwindling fissionable fuel supply from the rare metals mined from the Heart. They supply a fraction of the power it takes to run the Leviathan.
Most of the energy to run the core systems and the massive World-Drives comes from the Fae. Specifically the Fae artifacts of power, the source of all their magic away from the Earth. Power so vast it is difficult to comprehend. And only the Greater Fae Lords and Ladies, under the orders of Queen Mab herself, can extract the power safely in the Chamber of the Artifacts, the Ka'Ifinitum.
So even though we have a president, and are a democracy, and the Fae pretend to be governed by the laws of the world... they are the ones with the true power. And if the Fae feel slighted in any way, things on the world, in the Rings where the ones who slighted them live, start to mysteriously malfunction... Air scrubbers, temperature and environmental controls, hells, even the Day Lights or hot water generators.
So while rationally I know why the budget committee did what they did, I still don't believe the Fae should hold that much power over our government. And as the Fae have virtually infinite wealth and could have done their improvements themselves, they used government funds for their little home improvement project.
I was a little sad that my hunch was playing out here. I thought that some skin jockeys may have had some sort of grudge against the Summer Lady. The loose threads were, one, how did they even know about Ember, and two, how did she get outside the world to begin with?
Sighing, I said as I headed to the door, stuffing an apple in one of my belt pouches along the way, “Time to shake some trees and see what falls out. Append the files to the investigation notes so Reise doesn't call for an update?”
Mother chirped, “Already did.” I had to smile, we made such a good team.
I almost jumped when Graz said from beside my head, “We gonna bust some heads?”
My visor snapped shut as fast as I could think it, before she could zip in. Her preternatural reflexes had her stopping a hair's breadth from splatting against it. She eyeballed me, squeezing one eye shut as she perched on my shoulder as I said, “No 'we' aren't doing anything. I'm going to do my job, and you're going to do whatever it is you do.”
I qualified quickly, “As long as it isn't illegal.”
She grumped, “You take the fun out of everything. I haven't been able to get a decent... salvage... in weeks since we moved in with you.”
“Stealing is not salvage.”
“You can't prove I steal anything.”
“I caught you doing it the day we met.”
“Semantics.”
Exhaling slowly I said patiently, “
Like I said before. You are a civilian. I am an Enforcer. What I do is dangerous and you don't even have permission to do a ride-along.”
She tapped her tiny wrist console then clanked it against my visor. “Do now.”
I blinked and my visor magnified her screen. Mother Fairy Humper! I blurted, “A private investigator license? And an undated ride along waiver? How did you get...”
I looked up, “Mother?”
She wasn't even repentant, “It was either that, press, or government office for her to qualify for a ride along permit.”
“Why did you do it to begin with?”
“She asked.”
“So you forged a license?”
“Artistically issued one. And besides, how do you know she doesn't qualify?”
I sputtered, “Does everyone I know play fast and loose with the law?”
Their silence was all the answer I needed. I huffed as I stepped outside, growling, “Both of you are incorrigible!”
I opened my visor to let Graz zip in before mounting up on my Tac-Bike since I knew I wasn't getting rid of her now, and she needed the protection at the speeds the bike traveled.
Graz said “That's the spirit,” as Mother said cheekily, “Thank you.”
“It wasn't a compliment. It was... ah, forget it, I'm not going to win.”
Again Graz chirped out, “That's the spirit!”
“Smartass.” Then I added as I closed the visor and we shot off toward the spoke to head down-ring. “Mother, besides the Firewyrm pens we have identified, how many other spaces are you not allowed to observe or scan?”
She seemed put out that she couldn't even scan the pens, let alone had even known they have existed, so she started with, “That I'm aware of...” Then she gave a short list, “The palaces of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, and the Ka'Ifinitum. In addition, any judge can request privacy mode in their chambers, and the President can request privacy mode wherever she is.”
Graz asked, “What does that have to do with the case? You think the arsonist will strike again?”
I smirked, “No that was for personal reasons. Just seeing how many places Rory could have stuck her mother. Of that list, it can be only one of two places, and I have a hunch.”
She chirped in an ironic tone, “You always have a hunch.”
“They usually prove out.”
Mother mumbled, “That's what I'm afraid of.”
I stole Graz's line, “That's the spirit!”
The Sprite tittered, “For a big, you're ok.” Then she prompted, “So... where are we heading?”
“Going back to External Maintenance on Alpha. I need to check something before I walk the Skin.”
We arrived at the scrapyard in front of External Maintenance. The huge scales of skin were set up in stacks, making corridors between the piles of other junk cleaned up from impact sites. This was a scrapper's dream. But just like almost every scrapyard on the world, all the material belonged to the ship. It would be recycled as materials were needed. Even the servos, connectors, contacts and circuitry embedded in the scrap.
So technically scrapping was illegal, but most Enforcers and agencies like this looked the other way as long as it wasn't endangering anyone. Sometimes the meager chits they could get for the junk they sell is all that keeps them off the streets and helps to feed their families better than the monthly meal ration cards everyone on the world received to ensure minimum nutrition.
Instead of heading in I asked Graz, “How can we find the newest additions to the scrap heaps?”
She just pointed, “Over there. Can't you see it?”
Mother said, “She is correct.”
I asked, “See what?”
As she flew out in front of me, the flying nuisance looked back, her face contorted to one of pity, “You nulls really are almost blind, aren't you?” She pointed again, “Those over there were out in space most recently.”
How did she... I had my visor rise and said, “Full spectrum.” The world turned into a rainbow hued world, and then I saw it, but not in the infrared as I had anticipated. I wasn't sure what spectrum I was looking at without asking, but all the junk in the heaps and stacks had varying hues of silver emanating from them. The ones Graz was buzzing up to were brighter silver underlying the cold infrared emanations.
Then I got it. “Radiation signatures.” My eyes widened, “You can see that?”
Both of them answered plainly, “Yes.”
I squinted an eye in apology for some reason and asked, “Exposure to cosmic radiation burning off?” Their lack of answer told me I was likely mostly correct.
We went up to the huge panels. All of which had varying degrees of scorching, pitting, or in some cases, outright holes torn into them. There were ten possible sections but none of them had the blackened scorching I had seen. And by the relative size of each scale, I'd have to say that three to five panels had to be replaced to hide the damage on the Skin.
I sighed and said, “None of these is from that area. Is there a way to tell where each of these was removed from on the Skin?”
Mother said, “Each has a micro-etched serial number, and each is in the maintenance database to track batches and implementations on the hull.”
I sighed and said, “Odds are they just spaced them or they haven't been offloaded from the tug or rigs yet.”
Graz nodded and pointed to the far end of the yard, “Or they already sent them through the shredder/recycler.”
This got my attention. She explained as she flew backwards, leading me that direction, “When they need let's say more exotherium mesh for new panels when inventory gets low, they send the scrap through the shredder. It separates all the materials into separate bins for reclamation and recycling to make new panels.”
“How do you know all of this?”
She said with a shit eating grin, “Private Investigator.” I sighed and she deflated and said, “Hypothetically, if say a scrapper were looking for readily sorted relays or contacts, they might just bypass the manual labor of procuring them themselves, and just help themselves to the sorting bins instead.”
I cocked an eyebrow, “Hypothetically, that scrapper would be arrested since it is illegal... and that would make them a lazy thief.”
She nodded and repeated cheerily, “Hypothetically.” Then she brightened, “Hey look, there are some newer panels in the queue for shredding.”
I looked at them and sure enough they were glowing bright in that silver spectrum. We examined them. “Mother, can you scan the micro-etching and determine if they are from the area above the pen?”
She hmmed for a moment and was silent then hmmed again. “The serial numbers are not in the database... just a moment... they seem to be connected with an encoded file in the maintenance records tagged for external maintenance management eyes only if the area around the airlock in question is ever hit.”
“Can you decrypt?”
“Can I decrypt? Of course I can decrypt. But not for you Knith, even if I wanted to. They are tagged with Double Black protocol. I could show you the contents only if you have the release codes, and even then it would be for display only and my logging system would not be able to log the contents.”
“Double Black? I've heard rumors of contingency protocols like that before, but nobody has ever used one. They're for like catastrophic events only. Only the president and the Queens have that clearance and anyone they tag the files as readable to. I thought that was all just made up.”
I could imagine her shaking her head, “They are real, and I wouldn't be able to tell you if any have ever been used since it wouldn't be logged in my memory.” She seemed put out that there were things inside of her that were hidden from her, even in her own mind.
That had me musing out loud, “What could be in a file for the external maintenance crew managers that could possibly be Double Black?”
Then I saw it. “This panel isn't like the others.” I looked b
etween the panels laying against each other then grabbed the gap between two and strained, the servos in my armor maxing out as the panels groaned and slowly moved apart enough I could see that one of them had a large rectangular hole and what looked to be the remains of an airlock seal hanging on a retracted airlock door.
“Bingo. That's how Ember got out. And as the airlock door is open and not melted through, someone had to have let her out. We have opportunity and we have motive, we just need a who.”
I talked it through as I took the time to study the panels and the scorching so that Mother would record the evidence with my visual record. “Who would have access to the vessels, logs and the database records to be able to alter them to not show the repair of the area?”
She verified my thoughts, “Any of the four Stack managers, any of the fulltime salaried workers, but none of the day workers.”
I prompted, “So that would give us a pool of suspects how big?”
“One thousand and four.”
“Alpha-Stack only?”
“Two hundred and fifty one.”
“Cross reference employees yesterday who flew out of this hangar, visual records.”
“Thirty three.”
I rubbed my gauntlets together and grinned, “Now we're getting somewhere. How many flights?”
She sighed. The AI actually sighed at me, “Yes yes, you're clever Knith. The answer you are whittling down to are two flights that do not have corresponding flight logs. So six suspects.”
“Now we're cooking. Please pull the jackets on the six for me, now I just need to get a look again at that area on the Skin now that I know what I'm looking for... a hidden airlock.” I couldn't shake the feeling I was forgetting something, but I'm sure I'd remember before this was all over.
Then I almost strutted toward the office, “Shall we go make some noise, girls?”
Graz was all smiles and Mother played Ballroom Blitz by a group called Sweet from the anthropological records.
Chapter 12 – Dancing On the Ceiling
Max was asleep at his desk again, and I had sympathy for the man, knowing just how hard his schedule was and how much work he put in to streamline his department on top of it.
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