by R L Dean
He didn't even know how he came to the decision to board the tug in the first place. Well, he told himself. They got what they deserved. Look at what they did to Misaki, she won't speak of the horrors they put her through. And that pilot was about to shoot Haydon.
He sat down at the terminal in his own quarters and pulled up his half written report for the UN rep on Butte. Words on a Shipboard Incident Form made everything seem analytical, sterile. Haydon's account of his boarding the tug was drier then Mat's. The mechanic had written everything in three terse paragraphs. The wording was precise and the sentences short. More like a list in paragraph form. The report's words didn't capture the sights, the sounds ... the smell of sweat in Mat's helmet. But it did have one effect, by the time he closed the report the violence and dead bodies were locked behind that 'they got what they deserved' door in his head. Because that's what the report read like.
Mat rubbed his face and stared at the terminal's screen for a moment, then he opened something that felt equally as distressing— his bank account. From their current position it would take over two hours to update, but the bottom line on the screen now seemed right. Lord ... I need some coffee, because Yuri is hoarding the alcohol.
In the galley he pulled a drinkbox of coffee from the cabinet and put it in the heater. On the screen a newscaster was standing in front of the access tunnel to the Apex Mining ore processing plant, in Harmony dome. It was a sight he knew well. The audio was muted but he could guess what it was about, the union was growing tired of false promises and deals with the plant workers negotiated in to uselessness. It was a hot topic in the newsfeeds lately. The union was even gaining attention on talk shows and business news channels. Would have been nice if they were so worked up when his aunt was a welder and mechanic in the refineries.
"Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch; like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see."
Not quite the tenor he used to be, but he could still imagine his aunt smiling at him from the pew.
"A hymn?"
Misaki was floating into the galley. Behind a sheen of sweat the look on her face was flat, and serious, as always. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and there was a black mark across the front of her coveralls. When he stared for a moment she gave him that quick, small smile. Because of her ancestry it was hard to tell her age, and she hadn't said, but Mat thought she was about a decade his junior.
"Oh, sorry," he said. "I was a choirboy in a previous life. Sometimes he comes out."
"No need to apologize," she said, sitting her magboots down on the deck near him and pulling a box of cold water from the refrigerator. "My mother was New Catholic."
"New Catholic," he said, pulling his coffee from the heater and thinking. "There were a lot of those in Osaka dome."
She took a sip of her water. "Yes, exactly. What about you?"
"Harmony dome. My family, well my aunt Sylvia, was Reformed Baptist. I lived with her. Were you born on the Moon?"
She nodded. "Second generation. My grandmother immigrated there because of the refinery work."
"We came there for the same reason. I'm fifth generation. I think everyone in the domes spent time working in the refineries and plants."
Misaki pulled a mealbox from the cabinet, then another one and held it up. He nodded, and she put both of them in the heater. "So, how does a plant worker from Harmony end up with a ship mining gas over Saturn?"
This was the most she had ever spoken at one time, and she never asked questions of a personal nature. Mat thought it had to be a good sign. She was feeling better ... feeling safe.
"Ahh, well," he began. "Mom died when I was five, a maintenance accident. Dad ... he had a stake in a rock-hopper and was out in the Belt a lot. So I stayed with my aunt Sylvia. Spent my time between working in dome Maintenance and anyone of a dozen ore refineries. Then, about eight years ago dad comes home, dead. Killed when a canister attached to the ship blew ... took out half the Engineering deck along with several of the crew." He paused a moment before continuing, memories of that day drifted in his mind. His foreman wouldn't let him off shift to identify the body, he had to wait six hours before he could even see his father in a body bag. "Turns out dad had a lot saved up, plus the insurance payout. It was enough to put me through Shipboard Operations training and make a down payment on the Sadie." He spread his hand on the table and looked around the galley.
Misaki pulled the mealboxes from the heater and handed him one. They opened them and she stirred her lasagna before saying anything. "You still have family, back in Harmony?"
Mat shook his head. "Naa. My aunt passed three years ago. Stuff got in her lungs ... working at those refineries. That's why I got out as soon as I could."
He took a couple bites of his ham and potatoes. "What about you? How did you end up out here?"
"My mother wanted to keep me out of the refineries," she said, then took a sip of water. "And because my grades were good she made me join a work-study program for Mars. They needed engineers and technicians, and would pay for training and then give you a job. Then the funding ran out and I returned home." Her voice lowered suddenly. "The Pendletons were our neighbors. They came in from time to time, and mother begged them to take me on."
They ate in silence for a few moments.
Mat stirred his ham bits around, then asked, "Is there someone we can notify about the Pendletons?"
Misaki looked at him, pulling her fork out of her mouth, then shook her head slowly. Mat gave her a weak smile and shrugged. "Ahh, well. I guess you can tell the UN rep about them when we reach Butte."
She scraped the last of the red sauce out of her box with her fork and ate it, then pushed off the table. Peterson's coveralls were a bit too big for her and for some reason Mat noticed the way she had the sleeves of the arms and cuffs of the legs rolled up.
"Oh, hey," he said. "Haydon thinks I'm going to replace him. He says you're a real engineer. And I was wondering something ..."
Misaki put her mealbox in the disposal and turned back to him.
"Yuri downloaded that tug's transponder and course data, but it's heavily encrypted. Can you look at it, see if you can break the encryption?"
She stared at him with those big brown eyes without saying anything. He shrugged and added, "Thought I should put it in my incident report."
Nodding she said, "Send it to the main engineering terminal." Then she headed to the hatch and opened it. Pausing in the hatchway, she turned and looked back. "Mat, thank you for ... saving me. I cannot replace Haydon."
Mat watched the hatch close behind her with the vague sense that he had been misunderstood.
18 - Ludwick
Ludwick resisted the urge to rub his temples. The message had been precise. When Reinhardt is clear of the area, light the oil. He knew what that meant. And now the taxicart carrying her was speeding away, her bodyguard driving like the busted end of an air hose from a high pressure tank. Thing was, he received the message to light the oil on the old handcomm at least thirty hours before it was announced Reinhardt was making a visit to the dome.
So, how was that?
It made him wonder exactly who his benefactors were. And this was oil that Reinhardt herself poured. Ludwick never thought of the woman as eloquent, but her circular speech was usually more professional than that bumbling bit on stage just now.
Well, he had his orders. Light the oil. Lieutenant Tojo was going to be pissed ... Ludwick would be going to jail after all.
Looking around he saw three UNSEC soldiers wrestling someone to the ground. The idiot that threw the wrench most likely. News crews scampered out of the way as the soldiers closed ranks around the crowd and he realized it wouldn't take much to set things off. Turning, he jumped up on the stage. Davenport and that idiot Thorndike had left on Reinhardt's heels, so it was just him up there. As he wheeled around to the other side of the podium and looked up he caught sight
of Weathers. The sergeant was on the other side of the crowd. His helmet was on but his visor was pushed up, and he was looking at Ludwick.
Weathers, flat expression on his face, shook his head no once.
For some reason Ludwick felt a sense of guilt, like he didn't want to disappoint the kid, but the money was just too good. Grabbing the podium with both hands like an old-timey Baptist preacher he started yelling.
"Reinhardt didn't come here to talk about healthcare!" He shouted, the podium's audio projecting his voice out to echo across the block. "She came here to check on her useful cogs! That's all we are to her! Cogs in her money machine!"
Two soldiers pulled away from the crowd and were headed toward him. He thought that it would have made things harder if either had been Weathers, but thankfully neither of the soldiers was him. As far as he knew, the sergeant couldn't reach him because of the crowd.
"An injury to one is an injury to all!" He shouted. It was instantly repeated by the crowd, and a dozen fists raised in the air.
The soldiers were almost to the stage, they were slowed by a news crew that stopped and turned back to look at him. Ludwick yelled again, raising his own fist.
"The only thing the big shots understand is violence and money!"
The first soldier gained the stage— slipped on the edge— but the second leapt up and tackled Ludwick and the podium. But it was too late. As Ludwick went down he saw the crowd surge toward a line of soldiers. He tried to stand— the soldier grabbing at him— made it to his knees, then a boot slammed down on his back and he felt the fire of a stun baton lance through his shoulder. The first soldier had made it onto the stage.
One of the soldiers cursed and called him names, then said, "I'm arresting you, without warrant, for inciting a riot ..." Then one of them bent his arm back behind his back and called him more names.
"We're nothing to them!" He yelled. "We can't stand by any longer! They don't care about ..."
"Shut up!" One of the soldiers yelled at him.
More fire, this time it was his upper arm, and it was blinding. By the time it let up he didn't feel like yelling again and he idly wondered if his benefactors would pay him per stun.
"Open your mouth again and I'm going to shove this down your throat!"
No fear of that, all he could do was lie there in pain and try to breathe while they hitched his other arm up behind his back and put magnetic cuffs on his wrists. Yep, the experience felt the same as it had the night at that bar when he lost his temper. Give'em credit, they were consistent.
They jerked him to his feet and started pulling him off the stage. There was a sudden chorus of yells from the crowd and Ludwick looked up in time to see two UNSEC soldiers go down as the crowd shoved through the line and started spilling into the tunnel entrance. God only knew what they were doing. They would never make it past the first gate, let alone all the way to the plant.
One of the two soldiers hauling on him cursed and said, "Get him to the station." Then he turned and jumped down off the stage.
"Don't give me any grief," his escort yelled, scowling through his helmet visor, and starting dragging him to the steps.
* * *
As it turned out Lieutenant Tojo was content to let him rot in a holding cell. Formal charges did not seem to be a priority. So, Ludwick spent his time lying on a too small bench, in a too crowded cell of still simmering protestors he had worked so hard to assemble, thinking of what he was going to do with all that money his anonymous benefactors— whom he wasn't quite so sure where anonymous anymore, but couldn't fathom their reasons for doing what they were doing— would surely give him when he got out of jail. Or, was inciting a riot a federal crime? That would mean prison.
He supposed the most annoying thing about all this was the clock across the room hanging on the wall that was placed 'just so' anyone in the cell could see clearly. It ticked down the seconds and minutes and hours in a slow progression of big red digits on a large screen. It made time seem longer, each small part of his temporal existence in the cell dragging out. Torture, was the word that came to his mind. The clock was Tojo's way of torturing him. After all, there were other perfectly good cells that the lieutenant could have had him tossed in. But he chose this one ... facing the clock.
His thoughts idled between wanting a beer and wondering how long he would be there ... would his benefactors be done with him then ... were there still plans for him? Surely they wouldn't abandon him now ... surely ... not after all that he had done on their behalf. Prison. A cold shiver went down his spine. No, they won't leave me here, he told himself.
Let's stop calling them anonymous, he told himself. It was Apex Mining. That was the only answer he could come up with. Apex Mining hired him to make trouble for the plant— their own plant. He would never be able to prove it, if it ever came to that, but it was the only explanation. Who else would know that Reinhardt was planning on coming to Harmony and giving a speech more than twenty hours before it was even announced?
Maybe not Apex Mining as in Reinhardt herself, but it could be someone close to her. Her security detail, maybe. An enemy on the board of directors?
A hundred other questions and maybes went through his mind. The brain strain combined with the ache in his back and the lack of real sleep made his whole body hurt. Best not to trouble himself with such complex thoughts. So far, he had taken orders and the money rolled in. All without asking too many questions or thinking too hard about these sorts of things.
Sergeant Weathers passed by, holding a large handcomm. He glanced at them and frowned but didn't stop ... and it was in that moment that Ludwick realized why he felt guilt or shame when the kid looked at him. There was this sense of disappointment written on his face and in those blue eyes. Like Weathers thought Ludwick was ... better ... than all this mess he had created. Somehow, day after day of standing across from one another, with their respective parties behind them, they had gotten to know one another. On some level. Perhaps it was just a mix of observations and opinions, and nothing more. But when Ludwick thought of Weathers he thought of dedication and loyalty. The sergeant was a principled man, and Ludwick had fallen somehow in his eyes.
Maybe Weathers had respected him for what he was doing.
Maybe Ludwick saw himself in the sergeant.
Not so long ago he had principles, he was dedicated. He had a cause to be loyal to. The plant workers, he cared for them. He wanted better medical care for them, a safer work environment ... then reality set in and it had all gone to pot, as the saying went.
Well, the sergeant, as dedicated and principled a man as he was now, was only a crushed dream or two away from being Ludwick. In fact, take his fancy cop job away from him, stick him in the plant and he wouldn't come out half the man Ludwick was.
It sounded hollow in his head. But it was the truth.
For the next twelve hours he lay on the bench, got up and stretched, broke up a fist fight between two of his union members, and alternately thought about money and the good sergeant Weathers. It was 09:00 UTC before someone came to get him. A not-Weathers UNSEC soldier came to the cell door and called his name, then when he stiffly made it to the door he was helped by being pulled out by the arm. He was hauled— in the very near sense of the word— into Tojo's office.
Tojo's calm expression was the same as it had been the last time he was here. Ludwick didn't know how to feel about it ... should he be scared ... relieved. The man had a perfect poker face.
"Two officers injured, over twenty thousand dollars in damages caused by vandalism in the business district, theft and sabotage of Apex Mining equipment by workers inside the plant at the time you decided to take center stage. Estimates are still coming in, but I would say you did pretty well at instigating a riot and generally causing havoc throughout the dome. Not to mention, you inspired others in Archimedes and New Chicago to the same actions. Their security chiefs want you to rot in the deepest hole I can find, and every plant foreman on the Moon wants you deporte
d. As union leaders go you might just make history. Congratulations."
Tojo looked up at him from his desk, expecting a reply.
Ludwick didn't know what to say, so he shrugged. "What do you want me to say?"
Tojo stared at him for another moment then sighed. It was the most expansive expression that Ludwick had ever seen the man make. Then the lieutenant leaned forward, his elbows on the desk and his hands together.
"I want you to tell me why the DA's office refuses to pursue charges against you."
That was a surprise. He had in fact incited a riot— in other domes as well— and that was a perfectly chargeable offense. Even as his eyebrows raised and he stared back at Tojo he realized the answer. His benefactors. They must have greased a few palms. Then ... he felt both elated and sick. It was like taking the first sip of a cold beer and realizing that you just swallowed a bug. He was important enough for them to save, yet it was the same type of underhanded, back-dealing that had squished his dreams of helping the plant workers.
They bought people so that they could have their way.
Ludwick swallowed imaginary bile back down his throat. That ship had sailed. Whatever he had been, this was who he was now. If his benefactors— he believed Apex Mining— were not the puppet masters, then it would have been someone else. It was the way things worked. And people like Tojo, and Weathers, just needed to experience some heartache to realize that.
When he didn't answer Tojo asked, "Mister Chaserman, you are responsible even if the DA will not follow through."
A tiny part of him wanted to shout that the plants and the laws protecting them were responsible. But that was the voice of the old Ludwick, still lurking back there angry and righteous. He frowned, then asked, "Does this mean I can go?"
Tojo's lips stretched thin, in to what might have been his version of a smile.
"Well," the lieutenant said. "There are an awful lot of you in my cells, and the DA is perfectly willing to put the violent ones in jail. This will take some time to sort out." Then he nodded to the soldier standing at the door and Ludwick was forcibly turned around and pushed through the doorway.