“As I recall, Alison knew about it,” Zoya said. “She chalked it up to small enough that it didn’t matter.”
Natalya nodded. “At the time, she also thought she had it under control.”
“What happened?” Panko asked.
“She did an inventory with somebody who knew inventory management,” Zoya said. “She found out how many of those couches got received but were never returned after Downs said he’d done it. It was a large number.”
They sat in silence for a couple of ticks.
“I think you’re right,” Panko said, looking at Zoya. “Unless Tony Downs got really greedy and really stupid, he’s not trying to take over the project.”
Zoya nodded. “That’s the thing that’s bothered me about it. Downs doesn’t have any motivation to be anything other than a highly respected project lead to maintain his ability steal from the company. We’ve scotched that—at least for now—so he might have some animosity toward us, but this has been going on longer than we’ve been here.”
“He’s getting rich,” Natalya said. “That couch deal alone was worth hundreds of thousands. I’d be willing to bet every one of those expansion projects he worked on gave him a lot more than that.”
“Which brings us back to the idea that somebody wants this project to fail,” Panko said.
“Not fail, per se,” Zoya said. “Just suffer a catastrophic failure of management so they can take over.”
“Occam still applies,” Panko said. “Why not simply fail? Be shown to be untenable?”
Zoya crossed her arms and frowned. “I agree that the simpler rationale has a better argument but if that’s the case, why are so many different things going south?”
“Go on,” he said. “Talk it through.”
“It would have been pretty easy to scotch it from the beginning,” Zoya said. “Just give the design team conflicting task requirements that couldn’t be delivered.”
“Like what?” he asked.
Zoya glanced at Natalya. “Long legs?” she asked.
“That’s a good one,” Natalya said. “This ship—if we fixed the flaws with the drive and power—could jump a long way. Could be a record for the commercial vehicle with the longest jump. It’s certainly much longer than any ship I’ve known about could jump.”
Panko nodded and his eyes tightened. “Why is that a problem?”
“First, it’s unnecessary,” Natalya said. “Legs that long don’t really help with the kind of mission the ship is designed for.”
“Second, it’s unheard of,” Zoya said. “Whoever set it up might have thought it wasn’t possible to do without more mass, more power.”
“Clearly, the original design team solved it,” Natalya said. “But the redesign looks like it was done by a monkey with a marker.”
Panko snorted. “Because of the drive and capacitor?”
“Yeah,” Natalya said. “Anybody with a bit of knowledge about how a ship really works would have spotted that in a heartbeat.”
“That’s another reason why Pittman was a bad choice,” Zoya said. “I’m sure she’s a terrific administrator but she lacks expertise in two required knowledge domains—how ships work and manufacturing process.”
“The only overlap is the administration skills,” Natalya said.
“And effective administration of a flawed process doesn’t really help you,” Panko said. “I get it.” He looked at them. “Then who’s trying to kill you? Downs, because he wants you out of the way? Or the person who wants control of the project?”
Natalya frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe nobody,” Zoya said. “There were plenty of chances for us to get out of the ship when it started going bad. Nothing actually threatened our safety directly as long as we were taking the proper precautions.”
“Decompressing the ship?” Panko asked.
“Any competent test pilot would have worn a softsuit,” Zoya said. “And been strapped in.”
“Jumping into an unknown spot in the Dark?” he asked.
“Just because it’s not on our charts doesn’t mean it’s unknown,” Natalya said. “Only that we didn’t know it.”
He slumped on his chair. “Why would anybody want to get control of a failing project?”
“If they knew why it was failing, they could be the cavalry to the rescue, gaining a huge reputation with High Tortuga,” Zoya said. “That ship could have worked as designed until they dropped the second drive and capacitor.”
“The couch,” Natalya said.
“Yeah, well, the couch was Downs and company getting stupid with their skimming,” Zoya said.
“If we can figure out why, that will probably tell us who,” Natalya said.
Zoya nodded and looked at Panko. “You know anything about the structure of High Tortuga’s management?”
He frowned. “A little. Not much.”
“Who wins if the project fails outright?”
“Nobody. At the current rate of service degradation the system will likely blow up from too much success. The company is built on trust. Once that goes, the whole thing goes.”
“That would be bad?” Zoya asked.
“If nobody trusts High Tortuga’s banking, that’s going to play hell with trade which may have an impact on every person in the Western Annex. High Line and Toe-Hold alike,” Panko said.
“Follow the money,” Zoya said.
“Your granny again?” Natalya asked.
“Older. Confucius, I think.”
“Alison Pittman is the loose end,” Panko said. “If we can find out who put her into the job, we’ll have a pointer back to the person who wants it to fail.”
“Wouldn’t they use a cut-out?” Natalya asked.
“Probably, but everybody works for somebody,” he said. “With a few exceptions.”
“Everybody works for themselves,” Zoya said. “The only difference is who pays them.” She looked at Natalya. “Yeah. My grandmother.”
“I think I’d like to meet your grandmother,” he said.
“When this is over, maybe I’ll introduce you.” Zoya grinned at him. “If you can get away long enough to fly over to Margary.”
Panko grinned back. “Yeah. That’ll be the problem.” He rubbed a hand over his scalp and shook his head. “Right now the problem is getting this project out of the lock and into space.”
“So, who asks Alison?” Natalya asked.
“You two are going to be ghosts,” he said.
“Only for a few stans,” Natalya said. “We aren’t going to be able to hide very long before somebody spots us.” She looked around the ship with an exaggerated roll of her head. “We can’t stay in here very long. We’re going to need to get back to the Peregrine for fresh clothes, if nothing else.”
“What part does Call-me-Charlie play in this game?” Zoya asked.
Panko frowned. “Call-me-Charlie?”
“One of the techs. It’s like his catch phrase. Says it to everybody, apparently. Even Alison knows him by that name,” Natalya said.
“He fixed the lock on Echo One. There was a flawed interlock that wouldn’t let both doors open at the same time when the ship was in atmosphere,” Zoya said.
“What makes you think he’s connected?” he asked.
“We spotted him coming out of the bay one evening. When he saw us, he turned and went in the other direction,” Natalya said. “It looked hinky as hell. We went aboard and found that the lock access logs had been erased.”
“How do you do that?”
“The right commands? It’s not hard. Much easier than modifying them,” Zoya said. “We’ve got no way of knowing how many times they’ve been erased. Alison’s supposedly got a team checking for discrepancies but we never found out if they saw anything.”
Panko frowned. “So, we have extra players on the field?”
“Are we making this too complicated?” Natalya asked. “We have somebody maneuvering to take over the program and somebody—Downs—running
a major skim and scam. You think Charlie is a third player?”
Panko frowned, chewing his lower lip. “Not necessarily, but the level of conspiracy here is getting a bit out of hand.”
“A few players in key areas could do it,” Zoya said.
He nodded. “I could get behind that idea.”
“Well, we can’t answer any questions out here,” Natalya said.
“We can answer one,” he said, standing up and heading for the lock. “You have a deck puller over there, or should I take one with me?”
Zoya and Natalya shared a glance before following him.
“There’s one there,” Natalya said. “I’ll show you where it is.” She swallowed her fear and started climbing back into her softsuit.
“Zoya? Would you mind staying here?” Panko asked. “Just in case?”
“In case what?” Zoya asked.
He spared a glance at Natalya. “In case she’s right and there’s another trap waiting for us.”
Zoya’s eyes widened a bit but she nodded. “Fair enough. I’m not sure I can fly this ship, so you better come back.”
“Can you fly the Peregrine?” Panko asked, pulling his helmet up.
“Sure.”
“Same ship. Upgraded consoles but it’s basically the Peregrine with tow grapples.”
“That Scout you saw must have really made an impression,” Natalya said, her grin more nerves than humor.
“I’ve been a fan for a very long time,” Panko said and latched his helmet down.
Natalya led the way into the lock where they cross-checked each other’s suits before closing the inner door.
“Can you read us, Zee?”
“Got you fine.” Zoya’s voice sounded a little tinny in the suit’s headset.
Panko nodded, his face barely visible inside his helmet. He keyed the lock cycle and the outer door opened in a few moments. The safety line still stretched down over the hull toward the smaller ship cradled below. He clipped a D-ring to the line and pulled himself out of the ship hand over hand.
Natalya swallowed hard and followed. Extravehicular activity was never one of her favorite things, even when—rationally—the activity wasn’t any more dangerous than jumping across the Deep Dark in the flimsy shells they called ships.
When they got to the Echo One, she got the outer door open for Panko and they squeezed into the ship’s lock.
Natalya keyed the lock cycle and waited. The lock filled with atmosphere, sounds becoming more distinct as the air carried the vibrations from the hull and the small sounds of their boots moving on the deck, her suit brushing the bulkheads and fixtures.
The green light went on but the inner door didn’t open.
“Something’s wrong,” Panko said.
“Something’s right,” Natalya said. “I took the actuator off the inner door so it can only be opened manually.” She grabbed the dogging lever, pulled it aside, and pushed to swing the door open into the darkened ship. “We don’t have enough gases to refill the ship again, so we made it so the computer couldn’t trigger both doors open at the same time.”
“Clever,” Panko said.
Natalya felt a warm flush at his praise as she led the way aft into the engineering space. She grabbed the deck puller from its slot and consulted her tablet. It only took a moment to find the plate she needed and kneel to press the tool against it. With a deft tug on the handle she lifted the plate and tilted it up.
Panko leaned over and aimed a light into the cavity underneath.
The light glinted off the electrical fixtures, pipes, and ductwork all the way down to the top of the tank that ran along the bottom of the ship.
Natalya heard Panko’s sigh over the radio. “That’s disappointing,” he said.
“Don’t do this to me,” Zoya said.
“It’s empty, Zee.”
“Damn,” she said.
“Well, at least there’s room in the deck plan for more capacitor,” Panko said, his light playing over the internals, picking out the various points of connection.
Natalya nodded and leaned in. “Looks like enough for a hell of a lot more capacitor. Odd that they’d leave this empty.”
“Smuggler’s hold,” he said. “We should compare the plans a little more closely to see if there are any others.”
“How much could you smuggle in—what is that? Not quite a cubic meter?” she asked.
“My plans show it as closer to two,” he said. “Anything that’s low mass, low volume but highly taxed? That could be a lot of credits.”
Natalya pulled the deck plate back into place, latched it down, and removed the tool. “Like counterfeit credit chips?”
“Yeah. You could put a lot of them in a hole that big.” Panko led the way out of engineering and forward to the cockpit. “A nice cache of drugs if you’re going to one of the interdicted systems. A big pile of gemstones free from CPJCT oversight. There are a lot of things you could put in there.”
“Voice of experience?” Zoya asked over the radio.
Panko snorted. “Not exactly.” He aimed his light at the couch. “I thought they were going to replace that.”
“Replace what?” Zoya asked.
“The couch,” Natalya said. “They changed out the actual couch but they were having trouble re-engineering a base for it. Something about the deck fitting and material strength.”
He turned to her. “You believe it?”
She laughed. “Not for a hot tick. They were blowing smoke up my pants. With your ships coming off the ways soon, it didn’t seem worth fighting over.”
Panko grunted. “We’ll have to see about making sure we’re not getting charged for that thing. It doesn’t even swivel, does it?”
“Nope,” Natalya said. “But then, neither does the one in the Peregrine.”
He crossed to the couch and started examining it.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. It just looks—I don’t know. Wrong. This base doesn’t look like it’s meant for this couch at all.”
Zoya’s laugh came over the radio. “It’s not. That’s the original base from the monstrosity. They just tacked the new surface to it.”
Panko straightened up and stepped back, playing the light around the base.
“What?” Natalya asked, looking back and forth between Panko and the couch.
“This was the original base?” he asked.
“Yeah. Should be. We weren’t here when they changed the couch off, but it looks like the same box,” she said. “Why?”
“That’s a lot of wasted space. No drawers? No cubbyholes to store loose gear in?”
“Well, it’s just a prototype,” Zoya said.
Natalya watched Panko’s light as he walked around the couch to look at it from all angles. He even got down on his knees and looked up under the foot rest.
“How big do you think this is?” he asked, almost as if he were talking to himself.
Natalya measured it with her eyes. “At least a cubic meter. Maybe a little more.”
“That’s my take as well,” he said. He reached in under the footrest and pushed on the base.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
Panko looked back at her, his face a ghostly pale inside his helmet from the reflected light of his torch. “This is an anomaly. It’s been on the ship since it rolled off the ways. It should have been easier and quicker to just uproot it and replace it, but somebody went to a fair amount of trouble to keep this aboard. That strike you as odd?”
Natalya shrugged before she realized Panko probably couldn’t see the movement inside her suit in the dark. “Maybe,” she said.
He turned his light and attention back to the base. After a few moments of examination he reached in under the footrest and pressed the upper edge of the base where it connected to the couch itself.
Natalya heard a faint click. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Zoya asked.
“I thou
ght I heard a click.”
Panko sat back on his heels. “I did, too. I don’t see anything that might have made a click.”
Natalya walked around the base to get a look from the other side. A small crevice along the top of the back edge caught her eye. “Here’s something.”
He levered himself to his feet and walked back to shine his light where Natalya pointed.
“What is it?” Zoya asked.
“There’s a crack that shouldn’t be there,” Natalya said.
His light picked out the gap in the casing but no view inside. “That’s pretty clever.”
“What is?” Zoya asked.
“The latch is under the foot rest, but the door is along this aft surface,” Panko said. “Must cut down on pilferage.” He reached down and slipped a finger into the crack, making it wider and pulling to reveal a wide drawer sliding open on concealed runners.
His light gleamed off a plastic wrapped bundle that nearly filled the hidden compartment. As the drawer opened and more of the bundle was revealed, Natalya saw what must have been thousands of credit chips through the transparent wrap.
His low whistle shook Natalya out of her shock.
“What is it?” Zoya said.
“Tell you when we get back,” Natalya said.
Panko knelt beside the open drawer and examined the bundle closely. After a few moments, he pushed the drawer back in until it latched with an audible snap. “Time to go.”
Natalya followed him to the lock, securing the inner door behind her before pressing the lock cycle button. In a matter of a few ticks they were back aboard Serendipity with Zoya staring at them.
“Well?” Zoya asked. “You going to spill it?”
“The base of the couch is hollow,” Natalya said, stripping out of her suit. “It’s filled with credit chips. All stacked neatly and bound with shrink wrap.”
“Keeps them together and not rattling,” Panko said.
“That’s a big base. How many are we talking?” Zoya asked.
Natalya looked at Panko. “What do you think? Ten thousand?”
“Chips?” he asked, his eyes focusing somewhere in the middle distance. A hundred rows with at least seventy-five stacked around fifty deep?”
Zoya’s eyes grew round. “Three hundred something thousand.”
“Closer to four hundred,” he said. “Maybe as many as half a million and we have no idea what may be on them. Even if they’re blank, the street value of a blank credit chip is around a hundred credits.”
Suicide Run (Smuggler's Tales From the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Book 2) Page 29