by Tom Kratman
No cry for help there.
I repressurized the compartment and went in to retrieve the body. Protocol was we documented the death, even if it was suicide. For the scientists back on Earth. I had to check over the body to confirm she was dead. I knew she was dead. I’d watched the demos. She’d watched the demos. They said it was a nasty way to go.
I called MedLab and waited for a doctor to take her away.
Before I finished my shift, I had to interview the Polish cook, Przemys. He was a stereotype of an eastern European bloke. In his early twenties, square jaw, short brown hair, a short brown beard, and a nonregulation black sweatshirt with a load of “Cs” and “Zs” in bold white font.
As I walked into the brig, he was sitting quietly on the bed.
“You shouldn’t arrest me, Mr. Martin,” he said, looking up. “I did you favor.”
We agreed I’d call him Dennis. I read him his rights. He looked like he couldn’t care less. “Your victim is in MedLab with a shoulder injury,” I said.
He blinked at me. “He is criminal, Mr. Martin.”
“What did he do?”
“He is dirty. He cleans plates badly. I have told him for six months . . . ”
“Is that why you attacked him?”
He shook his head. “He tried to bring his brother to volunteer in the canteen. After our shift, I told him no, in the early hours, while we were drinking, and he argued. My girlfriend is expecting baby and eats in the Cafe Internationale, Mr. Martin. I do not want her to die.”
“Because he’s dirty?”
“Because he is ciapak,” he said. I looked blank. He leaned forward, intently. “I was there when they trashed ship, Mr. Martin. They tried to kill you. They would have killed us if they’d had chance.” Now I realized he meant Rashid. “Now two more people are dead, and others are in hospital.”
“That’s nothing to do with it, mate,” I said.
“Then why have you arrested no one?” he replied.
I didn’t think the truth would help. So I told him that investigations were ongoing and he should leave the job of vigilante to security. Then I did the usual procedure—handed him a contract that he’d stay off the booze and keep away from sharp objects. Fat lot of use if he didn’t, but my job’s what keeps me sane.
As he took the pen, I noticed a green tattoo on his wrist, a tree with arrows at the top. Underneath was written Protect. Defend. Phalange.
Dennis told me nothing about the Phalange. I didn’t have grounds to hold him, so I let him go. Then I walked to MedLab to check on his victim. He was asleep. Lizzie told me he was a Turkish teenager who’d got into the riot. He’d sided with Rashid and got a mild concussion. I finished my shift and walked to the Annan canteen. The graffiti was still on the wall. Protect. Defend. Phalange. I called the cleaning team before I went into the canteen. I had to hope the graffiti was Dennis’ handiwork.
It wouldn’t be, knowing my luck.
I asked the canteen manager about the graffiti. He said, “Fucking kids.” I told him we’d arrested Dennis. An Irish bloke asked, “The kid defending Rashid’s lot?” I named the victim. “Rashid’s fucking crazy,” said another guy at the bar. The Irish bloke nodded sadly. “He’s like every stereotype of a Muzzie I never wanted to believe.”
Both guys knew about the Phalange. “It’s some security thing Schwerz set up,” said the Irish bloke. “He doesn’t think we’ll get off this ship alive.”
I thanked them for their time. I thought about nicking them for hate speech, as well, but what would be the point?
I finished my curry and sleepwalked to Dr. Schwerz’s cabin. It was one block from the canteen and shipboard surveillance told me he was in. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again. He was outraged when Liz got Hope. Can’t say I blame him, really. He’d lost his son—no fault of his own—and then we take his granddaughter away.
He opened the door and frowned at me. He was in his late fifties, with precisely trimmed salt-and-pepper hair and a tidy gray beard. His gray suit had creases down the legs. He was soft-spoken, polite . . . just like you’d imagine a middle-aged academic. He wasn’t how I remembered myself even a few months after I lost my daughter.
And graffiti-wise, he didn’t look the type.
He invited me in. “I am sorry to hear about Przemys,” he said.
“How do you know him?”
He raised his eyebrows. “We are on the same spacecraft . . .” He paused. “Ah, I see what you mean now. We worship together. I am a Bavarian Catholic.”
I squeezed onto his narrow sofa.
“Did you suspect he might attack someone?”
He shook his head vigorously. “No, no, of course not.”
I couldn’t tell if he was lying. Sometimes you can’t. “So what’s the Phalange?” I asked.
He sat on his fold-down bed “It is what it appears, Tony. My son is dead. The security team has not found the killer. We are very frightened here in the European section of the ship. We think a murderer is free and more people will die.”
“D.I.Y. policing doesn’t end well.” I was thinking of a case where a vocabulary-challenged mob went after a pediatrician. We cops may not have Ph.D.s, but at least we can spell.
He leaned forward. “I do not encourage violence, Tony. We just patrol corridors in this quarter. We only defend ourselves if attacked. And our thought is we do attack if there are more murders that security fails to solve.”
“I’ve solved your son’s death,” I said.
He waved his hand, dismissively. “So I have heard. And they are dead, jah. Very convenient for you, I think.”
I ignored him. I’d heard this before. It’s not like it didn’t bother me. Ask any cop. You get accused of all sorts by the public when you’re just trying to do your job.
“How many people are in this Phalange?”
“We are few, but our numbers are growing.”
“Why ‘Phalange’?”
He frowned and his voice went cold. “Why are you here, Mr. Martin?”
“I’m investigating graffiti. Put up by your Phalange.”
He laughed. “Graffiti, hah!” He stood up, opening the door. “It was not me.”
“Do you know who it was?” I asked, standing up.
He shook his head. “I am not responsible for all the people here, Tony.”
I walked back to my cabin. I couldn’t blame him. Rubin Frick messed him about for months. No one took responsibility. It shouldn’t surprise anyone the colonists lost their trust in the crew and security. Over those long months, I’d thought about security taking over the ship; we’d make a better job. Thing is, if anything was likely to set off a riot, it was that.
Later that sleep, I dreamt of my daughter. She was running towards me with a fireball roaring along the corridor behind her, Little Hope holding tightly to her hand.
Two months later . . .
I got a call. “The recycling crew have found a dead body. Can you check it out?”
It was 2:00hrs ship’s time. I remember crawling out of bed in my emergency spacesuit, staring at a patch of mold on my sink unit. I was thinking of the worst possible option, which was Besma and the bootleggers over again.
“Not one of mine, is it?” I asked.
The guy on the other end sounded apologetic. “I think it’s one of yours.”
I got dressed in the storage locker adjoining my cabin. Not in my cabin, you understand, as the temperature controls in the sleeping section had been on the blink for a fortnight. I’d taken to sleeping in my spacesuit, calling the repair crew regularly, and praying for the end of the mission. Terra Nova was three weeks away, by this point, and the old boat was falling apart.
So I call OpSec on the way down in the elevator. The recycling crew had found the body in a distiller in the urine recycling system on D Deck. Not knowing what a distiller was, I was disappointed that it was a big silver drum like a beer keg. The recycling manager told me it spun to create artificial gravity, while boiling
off clean water.
He opened the lid of the drum. I remember feeling relieved the crew had drained the urine—we were in low-G. The body was curled up in a tight ball, didn’t smell too bad, so we decide to get it out to do an ID. So we don protective gloves and ease out of the barrel what turns out to be the naked body of a non-Caucasian guy. His skin is a bruised fleshy mass. His legs have been tied together with cables. His hands are trussed behind his back.
There’s one thing I’m sure about. He hasn’t crawled in there on his own.
Once he’s out to head level, I realize it’s my worst nightmare. Al Damer, blindfolded, urine drifting around his face. I remember thinking about the distiller. Al Damer’s been stuffed into a machine for cleaning up piss. There must be a message in there somewhere.
I ask the recycling manager a few basic questions. No, he doesn’t know when al Damer went into the drum, but it was probably between 23:00 and 2:00hrs ship’s time. He hadn’t seen anything unusual. “I did see some graffiti though,” he volunteers. “It’s just behind the recycling system.”
I knew what I was going to see before I saw it, and—to tell you the truth—that’s when my hands got sticky with fear. Directly behind the drum, a green symbol had been splattered on the bulkhead wall. Protect. Defend. Phalange.
I call back OpSec. “It’s al Damer. Get everyone up and ready.” Then I call Jamal and tell him to meet me on B Deck. Right then, my plan was to nick Dennis and Schwerz, go and nick Rashid, and, hey presto, nothing kicks off.
Back on B Deck, the corridor is vibrating with a low thudding sound. As I start wondering about that, my comms buzzes.
“. . . all security officers. We have reports of a woman being assaulted by youths. Local comms are down. Please attend Cabin 624 B.”
That was a few doors down from Dr. Schwerz’s cabin, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. I remember the thudding getting louder as I ran into the European quarter, and then, as I pass through the first set of bulkhead doors, I see two bodies facedown in the corridor ahead.
Dead? By this point in the mission, I don’t assume anyone’s blind drunk anymore. Then, I recognize the short brown hair. Blood is trickling over his ear. I bend down and check his pulse. Dennis is alive. His chest is rising and falling. I check the guy next to him—no pulse.
Shit. Another dead body—this is really turning into Agatha Christie. Or maybe another golden oldie, 300, because tonight I’m likely to dine in hell.
I hear footsteps pattering down the corridor. I turn around, adrenaline pulsing, my hands sweating cobs, but it’s only Jamal and Larry. I stand with them, while Jamal calls MedLab and tells them to send a doctor for Dennis and the dead bloke.
Then Jamal and Larry fall in with me, and we thunder into the Catholic section. First thing we see, is a cabin door hanging off its hinges. I can hear sobbing in the cabin beyond. I hold up my hand to Jamal and Larry. There’s a blond woman tied up and gagged on the bed. She’s clothed in a labsuit and soil-covered boots, probably a botanist just come off shift. Her huge, tear-filled blue eyes give me a beseeching look.
I rip off the tape on her mouth. “Thank God you’re here,” she says, in a strong American accent. “They’ve kidnapped Wanny.”
The name rings a bell. The petite pregnant lady who gave me a cake a few months before.
“Who kidnapped her?”
The woman starts sobbing. “The . . . Arabs . . . fucking Arabs.”
“Where are they now?” I ask gently, trying not to scare her. I start to untie her hands.
Suddenly, there’s a metallic crash, not far away. A door? Someone breaking a door down. Then I hear a woman scream.
“I’ll be back,” I tell the woman, and rush out into the corridor. The scream comes again, and I’m trying to follow it with my head. Then Larry says, “down that way,” and points through a maintenance corridor, and we go that way, following the crashes and screams.
We come out in the main corridor, right in front of a group of Arab-looking lads gathered around a cabin door. Two of them have a huge oxygen cylinder balanced on their shoulders, which they’re ramming into a cabin door. Thud . . . Thud . . .
“Stop! Security!” I shout.
A couple of them turn around. The scrotes with the battering ram ignore me. Thud . . . There’s a loud creak, a woman screams inside the cabin, and the door crashes down. Jamal and I rugby tackle the rearmost lad to the ground, pulling his arms behind his back. I’m calling for backup from the crew, while we cuff him and get out the homemade pepper spray. He’s screaming and yelling—he can’t be more than fifteen.
Two of the lads drag the woman past us, unconscious. Her head lolls forwards, long dark hair tumbling across her slack face. There’s no sign this is a drunken brawl—I don’t know what’s happening.
Larry’s pepper sprays another lad. Jamal and I go past him, after the two with the woman. They’re heading back down the corridor towards the Middle Eastern section. They stop and look around as we approach.
“Stop! Security!” I shout again.
“Fuck you,” says one of the lads. I remember arresting him during the riot.
I realize I can still hear thudding. The lad taps his ear and says something in Arabic, and I realize he’s wearing some kind of makeshift communicator. Jamal and I go for him, wrestling him down, cuffing him, and sitting on him, and hoping the other lad will run (he does).
Suddenly, I hear running footsteps in the maintenance tunnel. Abruptly, we’ve got twenty lads crowding us, armed with steel rods, cables and oxygen canisters. I’m trying to run back down the corridor, knowing they’ve killed someone already, and thinking that’s not how I thought I’d die.
Something hits me on the head.
I feel myself falling, with blows raining down on my head and shoulders. The last thing I remember is heavy footsteps and fresh shouting.
There are coppers you meet on the force who like a good fight—gives them an adrenaline rush. We had one guy, six foot five, ex-army, big guy, played rugby, used to rush headlong into pub fights like a cartoon character. He’d come out with blood pouring down his face, high fiving everyone. He was always getting hospitalized, broken nose, cracked ribs. . . . I used to feel a right wimp in comparison, until the poor sod died in a charity parachute jump. Then I was glad I had healthy sense of self-preservation.
That’s not to say I’ve never had the occasional broken bone on the job, but it’s nothing I couldn’t handle. I’ve been concussed a couple of times too, which I’m less keen on, because you see these blokes on the TV, getting hit on the head all the time, and they’re drooling vegetables by the time they’re forty-two.
I said that to Lizzie when I came around . . . and had my senses back . . . and she just laughed at me. We might be on a moldy tin can, but the UN had spared no expense on a top flight brain scanner, so apparently I was going to be fine.
I wasn’t so sure about the UNCS Cheng Ho. We’d lost control of the ship. Jamal and Larry had brought me in. They’d been fighting their way out, like I had, when twenty or thirty Phalange rushed in. The guys had risked their lives hauling me out, to MedLab, past twenty, fifty, eighty colonists scrapping in the corridors.
The camaraderie, the feeling of us against the world, that’s the one thing I’ll take to my grave.
I called Jamal, after a while, for an update. I felt dizzy, queasy, couldn’t focus on a book right in front of me, but I felt powerless sitting on my arse (or lying on it, at least).
He was down on the reactor deck with the guys and gals from the recycling, engineering and maintenance crews. They’d had a few colonists trying their luck at taking control of the ship (fucking idiots), but they’d managed to chase them off. I asked him if he had a plan, but he didn’t, and I felt sick to my stomach that colonists were smashing up the ship, kidnapping and murdering innocent people, and we were just standing about watching.
You get mood swings with concussion, or—at least—I do. So I got pretty depressed just think
ing about it. What sort of security team were we? I imagined myself as Rambo in the old movies, single-handedly taking them down with machine guns, but—realistically—I’d be dead in a minute.
We didn’t have the numbers . . .
(Nor the machine guns, unfortunately).
I just couldn’t help blaming the UN and NASA. Why didn’t they think this might happen? We didn’t get any training for it (unlike Japanese puppet theatre). Surely astronauts going nuts was a fictional trope.
I started crying.
Lizzie asked, “Is it the concussion?”
And I said, “No, it’s the crooks.”
We had civilians arriving by this time—injured or just frightened—and she felt sorry for me.
So she was like, “Ach, I’m off shift. Can you look after Hope for me?”
And I knew she was giving me something to do, to stop me dwelling on it. So I said, “Yes,” and she bought over a box of toys they’d made in the postnatal group—hand-drawn books on cardboard, cardboard tubes and boxes.
Next minute, she walked Hope onto the ward, and I had a toddler on my hands for the first time in a decade. I remember holding her on my knee, the warm weight of her, looking at the little brown pigtails, feeling her chubby little hands clasping mine, with the memories of my daughter flooding back like a tide.
I sat there, watching the colonists come in wrapped in blood-stained bandages, listening to them talking, telling Lizzie that the Phalange and Rashid’s lot had barricaded themselves into their respective sections, and they were scared to go back.
I looked back at the little girl, grinning with a gap-tooth smile, and I thought poor little sweetheart. You don’t know what a tough life you’ve had.
She’d escaped death, as her name suggested, and I thought: you’re the reason I became a cop. I’m not going to let you down.