Friends in the Stars

by Mackey Chandler

  “I don’t know either, but when you get that sample ready, I think you should approach Capital Provisions to make a presentation. I need you to get on the inside there to discover what is happening and get in that storage facility too.”

  “That’s easy. Anybody can get in there if they have an empty unit to rent. The food people are a lot more difficult. I can make my pitch and see what happens, but as soon as I dig for third party information his veracity software is going raise all sorts of warning flags,” Pamela said.

  “I have yet to see Derf using any veracity software, and if they did, I’d bet it is keyed to Derf biometrics. If you can slip in one statement or question about the Foys, we could at least find out what direction we should be investigating,” Kirk said.

  “You’ll have to help me with how to do that,” Pamela said, anxious.

  “Of course, but you’re an old hand at protecting your job and programs in the Department where everybody scrutinizes your every word. You’ll do just fine getting these unsophisticated outworlders to reveal something.”

  He and gave her hand a little supportive pat of encouragement and then left it there.

  “Thank you,” Pamela said, and blushed a little at his praise, but put her other hand over his and smiled.

  * * *

  “Kirk is the investigator while dear Pamela runs the front company,” Sam said.

  “That makes sense. Her family is all big business people,” Bill said. “I’m surprised she went to work for State. Daddy would have set her up in something if she’d wanted I’m sure. And I don’t mean some dinky beekeeping operation.”

  “Apparently he has not discovered you can get the car service records pretty easily,” Sam said, “but I’m embarrassed. He has been paying money to a company and when I investigated them, I found they have an eye in the sky drone that circles around at thirty- five hundred meters and monitors the whole city day and night. Two drones actually, so they see it in stereo so not much is hidden behind large structures for very long. I wish I’d know that it would have been very handy. The amateur got ahead of me on that”

  “Well, better late than never,” Bill said. “You can probably buy back records.”

  “You can, but it’s a lot of data to process, and a lot of it will be stuff I already discovered other, harder ways.”

  “Right, well, let an artificial stupid run down some of the side interests like other people who visit Miss Anderson or our State Department entrepreneurs. If they find any repetitious patterns you might check them without wasting too much time on it.”

  * * *

  “North America is trying to play the victim because Lee and Gordon visited Providence. Read this, it’s bizarre,” she told April and Jeff.

  April finished the teaser first and just rolled her eyes.

  “They make it sound like an invasion,” Jeff said. “For crying out loud...they discovered the planet and own chunks of it. If the Earthies don’t like them visiting Lee and Gordon should kick their butts out for reneging on the deal like we said before.”

  “Read the rest under details,” Heather said. “Of course, one in ten thousand will do that. They have them trained that the three-paragraph-teaser in larger print tells them everything they need to know, but Gordon is of a like mind to you. That’s pretty much what he threatened to do if they broke their contract. He pinged ‘em with high powered radar pretty hard when they denied him system scan and scared the USNA destroyer at dock so bad he ran scared for jump on a very short count. Such a short count that I bet he left people behind on station or on-world who couldn’t make it to the ship on time.”

  “Well sure,” Jeff agreed. “You said it was both Lee and Gordon. ‘It was a trap! There were two of them!’ They’ll forgive the destroyer captain when he explains that.”

  “The basic story repeats in too many news outlets not to be an official government story they want the public to know. It’ll be repeated for days,” Heather predicted.

  “We’re already committed to protecting them,” April said. “If they would demand Providence back over breach of contract, do we support that? You know the Earthies, and North Americans in particular, aren’t going to accept the concept they defaulted. They’re going to regard it as an aggressive act of piracy or war, not a defensive action.”

  “Questions of morality aside, I want to be on Gordon’s side, Jeff said.

  “Gordon is scary,” April said. “I’ve seen the recordings. I’d be seriously worried to fight him even with super-luminal ships. I’d be concerned he was in my head three moves ahead and I’d be like that poor bastard at Fargone who came out of jump to find Gordon gone – jumped out – and still took a missile right down his throat Gordon left behind aimed at where he guessed the fellow would emerge.”

  “Of course, to continue what we discussed before, if we give them the drive, we’d then have Gordon as an ally to develop super-luminal tactics. I hadn’t thought about that. I bet he’d put a real polish on what we’ve developed,” Jeff said. “I wouldn’t want to admit that to their face, but it would be a real bonus to get his tactical skills.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Heather told Jeff. “Our tactics all turn around the fact we are fighting run-to-jump ships with no-run super-luminal vessels and jump drones. We have no tactics for fighting ships equal or superior to ours. If we meet a race out there that has been fighting peer ships for years, they are probably going to hand us our butts at first. We’d just have to hope we could learn fast enough and catch up before we run out of ships.”

  “I’d address the other thing you mentioned,” April said. “We can’t give them the drive the way they might expect. We barely get enough quantum fluid to meet our own needs. All we could give them is a design and say – Here you go, this works, if you can figure out how to make this stuff.”

  “Or something very similar,” Jeff said.

  “I think they’d believe us,” April said. “Or at least Lee would, and she could persuade them, but we never thought the Earthies would believe that. Whatever they made to generate an artificial earthquake it has to be similar to our gravity lance. The big difference is they have a process. If they get it to work for a drive similar to ours, they aren’t going to be material-limited. From where I’m sitting, unless you have a lucky hit on duplicating your mom’s process, we’d be getting a better package from them.”

  “If their process produces a similar material maybe it would reveal a path forward to duplicate my mom’s stuff. Then we’d have two routes to the tech,” Jeff said.

  “It’s a possibility,” April agreed. “But that all hinges on the way things are now, before they have an equivalent technology, and before Earth does something stupid again to disturb the political balance. The window of opportunity could pass us by. If we wait, things could stay the same, or improve, but honestly, we are talking politics and I’ve never seen things just spontaneously improve. Don’t you guys think we should ask Lee back here and make her an offer she can’t refuse?”

  “No!” Heather said so sharply it jarred April. She’d expected Heather’s support as a given, and that she’d have to work to win Jeff over. “It reeks of arrogance to demand she appear before us like a supplicant. One of us should go to her.”

  Jeff sighed. “I’m the guy who can explain the theory and who cobbled up the engineering. “I guess it’s on me to go talk to them. It will be interesting meeting these two fellows she hired. I only know them from reading their web searches and them contacting me, thinking I was my own grandson. But I have a little insight into their thinking already.”

  April had a dozen things leap to mind to say, and swallowed them. Jeff flipped and decided to go, and all she could do by saying too much would be to talk him out of it.

  “Do you need anybody else along?” Heather asked.

  “No, but I think I’ll take the Hringhorni if you don’t mind. I haven’t used her in a while, and I don’t need any serious freight capacity or heavy arms. I’ve never had ne
ed of it before, but I think you should elevate me to being a Voice at least equal to Eileen. Just to keep straight who is ranking the ranking peer, out on the sharp and pointy end where we can’t consult with you quickly or easily.”

  Heather nodded easily and handed a heavy ring to him without ceremony.

  “Go armed, with companion drones,” Heather said. “The Derf don’t mind personal arms as long as they are holstered, so don’t fly them unless you need them.”

  “I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t leave some things I’m doing right now to come along,” April said. “But do check in with Eileen and Victor first and give them my love.”

  “OK, and I’ll take them some special treats like coffee,” Jeff said. “Would you have Dakota find out what else is scarce and a luxury there?”

  Chapter 15

  Kirk came in and pulled a chair up next to Pamela working at a bench, but turned the other way to straddle it facing her. “You hit the nail right on the head telling me to surveille the storage place,” Kirk said. “There are two lawyers renting a room there who are both from Earth. They have expensive offices up on the ridge and I did a traffic analysis of their office and had the private eye agency approach them. They don’t seem to have many clients and aren’t all that eager for new business at all. In fact, they put the agency fellow off and recommended a different Earth attorney as more suitable to his needs. Now I find the attorneys have a storage room in the same facility as the Foys.”

  “Maybe they all meet there secretly every Thursday evening for poker,” Pamela said.

  “Did you know this fellow to be an avid poker fan?” Kirk asked. He laid a full-face photo of Bill King in front of Pamela. She pushed the microscope on the bench with a dead bee away to look closer.

  “Oh, that son of a bitch!” Pamela said, face growing angry. “He’s a lawyer OK, but was State Department through and through, and a snide, nasty piece of work. He hates anybody who shows a little bit of class and made so many enemies he ended up resigning to everybody’s great relief. I’d hoped he was riding a garbage truck or working in a slaughterhouse after he was gone.”

  “Worse, I think he became a spy,” Kirk said, “but if he is, he’s in an agency too dark for it to be in our database. I don’t like that. It implies they’re the nasty sort of operators.

  “If he was sent here to screw up our operation, I’m going to kill him,” Pamela vowed.

  “He and his partner were in place here before we conceived of this mission,” Kirk said, “which doesn’t exclude that they might have been told we are here if another agency got wind of it or discovered it on their own.”

  “King’s lazy. I can’t imagine he found out on his own if it required any initiative.”

  “Do you know this one?” Kirk asked, and showed her Sam’s photo.

  “No, but if he’s with Bill, well, somebody has to do the work,” Pamela said.

  “I’ll keep a close watch set on them with alerts to my phone, and learn more if I can to build up a pattern of activity and travel,” Kirk said. “Do you want to go into town and get some dinner? I’d like to try that Italian place if you are interested.”

  Pamela put a hand on his far shoulder, leaned over and nuzzled him. I’m interested,” she said in his ear, “but maybe a bit later. I’d rather spend some time with you before we run into town.”

  Kirk stopped breathing. He’d been of a like mind for some time, but reluctant to discover if his boss felt the same way. The risk did add to the excitement.

  “Are you sure about this?” Kirk asked. “Are we going to be able to work together?”

  “I think we’ll work together just marvelously,” Pamela assured him.

  * * *

  “Very interesting,” Sam said. “Miss Anderson has occasional visits from an unlikely couple of aliens, a local Derf and a Badger from their new embassy. He smells of the sort of thing we do, running intelligence officers out of embassies. He’s supposedly a ship technician and the Derf is a sort of physics professor. I can’t see their professional interests overlapping and it’s hard to believe it is interspecies love.”

  “Do the Derf have tech advanced enough for aliens to want to steal?” Bill asked.

  “Not that I have ever heard. They use human tech but if there is anything more advanced, I’d suspect it is from the aliens. They were already starfaring when discovered. I’d never have seen this sneaky fellow without the drone service. Turns out he has a special group card and gets his car service through the university at a special group rate,” Sam said.

  “Does he connect to the Foys or our own State Department people?” Bill asked.

  “That’s what I am looking for right now. No, and no, but here’s something that sets off all my alarm bells, Sam said. “They’ve made a number of trips to the same storage facility.”

  “The same one you rented a room planning to get in and snoop?” Bill asked.

  “Yes, they all rent and go there, but not at the same time,” Sam said.

  “So they aren’t all meeting and swapping stuff in secret? Unless, they share cards and keys, and have access to each other’s units and stuff,” Bill said thoughtfully.

  Sam looked at Bill shocked. That was way beyond any conspiracy fantasies he could have imagined if invited to try.

  “I know I’m paranoid,” Bill said with a dismissive wave at Sam’s expression. “I don’t know why they would do that, but I’ve seen stranger things revealed and most of the time it didn’t make any more sense after than before.”

  “Here’s another one the AI is feeding me,” Sam said. “These two have almost no activity visible, which is hard to do on Derfhome, but the aliens rented the storage and charged it off to Lee Anderson’s bank account. That makes me look back and there is a bizarre charge on a public shipping contract to deliver something to the Physicist’s University offices. It doesn’t say what it was in any detail, just machinery and the shipping mass, but she paid twenty-seven million dollars Ceres to have this something delivered from Fargone.”

  “Amateurs,” Bill declared with contempt. “They really are trying to keep a low profile, but they forget or decide something like the storage rental isn’t important or don’t understand how something like the freight fees are paid and documented. Even seasoned government operators can mess up and do the same. If you have a single item revealed for twenty-seven million you better figure it’s the tip of an iceberg. What is the lag on your surveillance of the car service? How long after the ride is it done and billed?”

  “It will report to me almost real-time,” Sam said. “Once the requested ride arrives and the car door closes a destination is provided. It shows all the details of how it is in use on their tracking.”

  “Can they stop in the middle of a trip and demand to be let out or switch their destination?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t know. Now that you asked, I’m going to have to try that to see how the system responds, but I’ve never seen anybody do those things. I think, since they don’t suspect anybody is tracking them, they’d never think to try.”

  Bill struck a ‘Thinker’ pose unaware he was doing so, and his eyes narrowed.

  “I’d have the system alert you, and forward it to your phone if need be, any time a new person visits any of your targeted people. I know you are going to see a lot of things like package delivery and food delivery the car services do, but you can tell the program to delete those in the future and you’ll quickly reduce the load of alarms. However, you might pick up some important peripheral characters we need to know about,” Bill said. “Also have it page you anytime two or more of your primary targets are in motion.”

  If there was pizza delivery Sam didn’t know about it, but he’d have to look now.

  “This is growing to take a bigger chunk of my time than I expected,” Sam said. “It will cut into my volume of reports on mundane commercial traffic and the news that seeps out of the Keeps.”

  “It smells important to me. Just add the stuff on th
e clans and Keeps and Mothers to your reports without reading more than the first and last sentence,” Bill said. “That’ll keep your volume up and look like you aren’t in semi-retirement. I’m sure nobody back on Earth reads every last word of that crap anyhow. They will scan it all for keywords and look at those. If they trusted us we could filter it all for them here, but that would cut down on the number of cannon polishers they have to hire.”

  “Cannon polishers?” Sam asked.

  “A literary reference,” Bill said, “search brass cannon and Heinlein.”

  * * *

  “This is Jeff Singh,” Their com suddenly announced aloud, since he triggered their highest priority, not a polite flashing light that said they had a message waiting in storage. “I’m going to dock at Derfhome station shortly and take the next convenient commercial shuttle down to the City. That’s easier to do than explain how such a small ship can be an interstellar voyager and not just a landing shuttle. I have some policy changes I’d like to brief you on and then I’m going to request an audience with Lee Anderson. I’m hoping she hasn’t zipped off to Fargone or Providence again.

  “Would you please get me reservations for a suite of rooms somewhere? I don’t know how long I intend to stay, but better make sure they are available for a couple of weeks. I imagine you’ve been here long enough to know which places have better reputations. I’d like something that has room in the suite to have a comfortable meeting of a half dozen people including physically larger Derf. I’ll need a car and driver. I haven’t read enough about the world to know if an air car is a necessity. I’ll leave that sort of thing to you to determine. Oh, and a hotel or apartments with a good kitchen or nearby decent place to eat. I’d rather not have to hire staff or live in help for such a short term stay if it can be avoided. I know you are not in your embassy building yet and I very specifically do not wish to impose on your domestic arrangements.