* * *
There was traffic all around Luna, but the LUG system in Victor’s quickship took over the flight controls long before he reached the mass of ships. Freighters, courier ships, passenger vessels moving back and forth to Earth, newer corporate mining ships heading out toward the Asteroid Belt, many of which were emblazoned with the Juke Limited corporate logo.
The quickship had decelerated hours ago, and now that he was here and close, he found the LUG system’s docking speed maddeningly slow. Soon other quickships were gathering around him, coming in from all quarters, all being lugged toward the same destination; where exactly, Victor had no idea.
He could see Earth but he was greatly disappointed since he had expected it to be much closer. It was night on the planet’s surface, and there were millions of lights twinkling below the atmosphere. All of those people, he thought, and none of them know what’s coming. Or maybe they did know. Maybe word had gotten through. Victor hoped that was true. That would mean his work was done.
The settlements and industries of Luna constituted the tiniest part of the moon’s surface. Victor had seen pictures, but they had been taken from space, so he expected a small outpost. When the moon rotated as the quickships approached, and the city of Imbrium came into view, Victor gaped in wonder. Factories, smelting plants, huge industrial complexes with so many lights and pipes and buildings that they seemed to be their very own cities. Then Imbrium proper came into view to his right. Buildings and lights and glass-topped walkways. It was more human-built structure than he had ever seen.
He could feel his body getting heavier. Gravity was seizing him. The quickships around him organized themselves into a line, all of them loaded with huge cargos of cylinders. Victor’s eyes followed the line in front of him, and he saw that the LUG system was taking the quickships to a massive complex beyond the city.
Then suddenly his quickship deviated from the others and changed course, flying down toward a hangar with a ceiling at least a hundred meters high. The quickship’s engines died. It drifted into the hangar. There were damaged quickships everywhere in various stages of repair, but there were no workers that he could see. Robot arms extended and grabbed the quickship. His forward motion stopped, and Victor was thrown against his restraining harness. The pain took his breath away, and he was certain he had cracked a few ribs. He coughed, trying to get his wind back. The ship rotated ninety degrees, with the nose pointed upward. Victor was on his back. The robot arms lifted him quickly and hooked the ship onto a long rack of quickships hanging by their noses ten meters off the ground. The robot arms released him and went elsewhere.
All was quiet. The ship swung lightly on the rack, an odd sensation caused by gravity that Victor had never experienced. He waited, but no one came for him. He unharnessed himself, still wincing from the pain in his chest. His body felt heavy. He climbed out of the seat and looked out the window. He was too high off the ground. He didn’t trust the strength of his legs in partial gravity with a drop like that. He scanned the warehouse floor, looking for people. There were none. Everything was automated. A quickship suddenly slid onto the rack in front of him, pushing him farther into the rack, partially blocking his view. The robot arms were packing him in here. He needed to get out.
He tried the hatch. He couldn’t open it. The other quickship was packed in too tightly. He went to the radio and tried a frequency. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
Again, the sound of his own voice frightened him. It was hoarse and crackly and barely above a whisper. No one responded. He heard only static. He tried another frequency. Still nothing. Then he tried another and got chatter. Men talking, giving numbers and data; Victor didn’t understand it. He interrupted them. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
The chatter stopped. There was a pause. “Who is this?”
“My name is Victor Delgado. I’m a free miner from the Kuiper Belt. I’m stuck in a warehouse of some kind.”
“Get off this frequency.”
“Please. I need help. I have information that needs to get to Earth.”
“Sanjay, I got someone on the frequency who won’t get off.”
A different voice—deeper, commanding, with an accent Victor didn’t recognize. “I don’t know who you are, mate, but this is a restricted frequency. Now get the hell off before I have you tossed.”
“Please. I need to speak to someone in charge. All of Earth is in danger.” The words sounded trite, even to him.
“You’re the one in danger, mate. Marcus, triangulate that signal and find this prankster. I want this ash trash off my frequency.”
Victor stayed on the frequency, but didn’t say more. Let them triangulate it. Let them find him.
An hour later a police rover arrived. A single police officer in a suit and helmet got out with a light and began scanning the interior of the warehouse with bored disinterest.
Victor banged on the side of the ship with a tool to get the man’s attention, but the man couldn’t hear him. Victor lowered himself to the back of the ship, which was now the bottom. He turned on his cutting tool and began slicing through the ship’s wall, showering the inside of the ship with small burning metal embers. He pressed harder, being careful not to damage his suit. The cutter broke through. Hot embers rained down from the ship into the warehouse. The officer saw him.
It was another hour before someone who could operate the machinery arrived to lower the ship from the rack. When the men lifted him out of the quickship and set him on the ground, Victor’s legs gave out completely. He buckled and crumpled to the ground. He tried pushing himself up with his arms but couldn’t. He lay there not moving while the officer attached an audio cable to his suit.
“I need to see some identification,” said the officer.
“I don’t have any. I’m a free miner.”
“Space born, eh? Let me guess, you don’t have any docking authorization, either.”
“I came here from the Kuiper Belt.”
The officer looked amused. “On a quickship? Sure you did.”
“You don’t believe me? Check the flight computer.”
The officer ignored this, typing notes onto his pad. “So no permits, no papers, no entry codes, nothing.”
“I need to speak with someone in charge.”
“You need to speak with a lawyer, space born.”
They carried him out to the rover and lifted him into the cargo trunk. Victor felt completely helpless—and to think this was only one-sixth of Earth gravity.
The officer drove him to a medical facility, where nurses put him on a stretcher and gave him IV fluids and ten different vaccinations. When they finished, an officer in a different colored uniform entered and wire-strapped Victor’s wrists to the stretcher. It wasn’t until the man started reciting a litany of legal rights that Victor realized he had been arrested.
CHAPTER 21
Imala
Imala Bootstamp wasn’t trying to get anyone fired at the Lunar Trade Department, but it sure felt good when she did. The culprit was one of the big uppity-ups, a senior auditor on the fifth floor who had been with the LTD for over thirty years. Imala, a mere junior assistant auditor with the agency, was so far down the totem pole that it took her a month to get anyone with authority to actually look at what she had found.
She had tried going to her immediate boss, a perverted idiot named Pendergrass, whose eyes dropped to her chest whenever she was forced to bring anything to his attention. Pendergrass had only told her, “Get off the warpath, Imala. Put down your little tomahawk and focus on your job. Stop following tracks you shouldn’t be following.”
Oh Pendergrass. You’re so, so clever. How witty of you to make reference to my Apache heritage.
She had thought the world had outgrown racial insults—she certainly had never heard any growing up in Arizona. But then she had never known anyone like Pendergrass, either, who called her cubicle her “wigwam” and who would always make a circle with his mouth and tap it with his fingers
whenever she passed him in the break room. She could have gone to HR and filed a complaint a long time ago, but the HR bimbo assigned to their floor was actually sleeping with Pendergrass—a fact Imala found both repulsive and sadly pathetic. Besides, Imala didn’t want anyone fighting her battles for her. When she felt the need to “go on the warpath,” she’d be swinging her own tomahawk, thank you very much.
She couldn’t go to Pendergrass’s boss either. He was a pushover yes-man whose head was so far up his boss’s ass that he wore a kidney for a cap. All she’d get from him was a nice condescending lecture on the importance of following the chain of command. Then Kidney Cap would go to Pendergrass and give him an earful for not keeping his Apache on a short leash. And if that happened, Imala would have hell to pay with Pendergrass.
So she did the slightly unethical yet wholly necessary next best thing: She lied her way into the director’s office.
“Do you have an appointment to see Director Gardona?” asked the secretary, not looking up from her terminal.
“Yes,” said Imala. “Karen O’Hara, Space Finance magazine. Here for the feature interview.”
Imala felt ridiculous with her hair in a bun and dressed in such a fashionable jacket and slacks—which she had rented for the occasion—but she knew she needed to look the part. She wasn’t concerned about the secretary recognizing her. The agency employed hundreds of people, and all the grunts on the second floor where Imala worked never hobnobbed with anyone up here on the fifth. They didn’t even use the same entrances. It was like two neighboring countries whose borders were never crossed.
Imala had tried a week ago to set an appointment with the director as herself, but as soon as the secretary had learned that she was a junior assistant auditor, the secretary referred her to her superiors and hung up on her. Nor could Imala get an e-mail or a call through. All of the director’s messages were screened, and every attempt to contact him had been blocked. It was ridiculous. Who did the man think he was? This was the Lunar Trade Department, not the damn White House.
So here she was, doing the stupidest thing she had ever done in her life, all to get an audience with someone who might take her seriously.
“This way please,” said the secretary, leading Imala through two doors that required holoprint authorization. The secretary waved her hand through the boxy holo by the door, and the locks clicked open.
All the security made Imala nervous, and she was beginning to wonder if this was a good idea. What if the director didn’t think her information important enough to overlook her unorthodox way of getting his attention? Or what if she was wrong about the data? No, she was sure about that. The last door opened, and the secretary ushered her inside. Imala stepped through, and the secretary disappeared the way she had come.
Director Gardona was standing at his workstation moving his stylus through his holospace, zipping through documents so fast, Imala couldn’t imagine how he could possibly be reading anything. She put him in his early sixties, white haired, fit, handsome. The suit he was wearing was probably worth more than three months of Imala’s salary.
“Come in, Ms. Bootstamp,” he said. “I’m most interested to meet you.”
So he knew who she was. Imala wasn’t yet sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
He pocketed his stylus and faced her, smiling. “But tell me first, is Karen O’Hara a real journalist for Space Finance or did you pull that name from a hat?”
“Real, sir. In case you checked her on the nets.”
“As if I have time for such things,” he waved her to a cocoon chair, which resembled an empty sphere with the front quarter sliced off. They were great for minimal gravity, and Imala climbed inside. Gardona took the chair opposite her.
“Why did you agree to meet me, sir, if you knew who I was?”
Gardona spread his hands in an innocent gesture. “Why wouldn’t I want to meet any of my employees? And such a good one, too, I’m told.”
He was either lying or there were people watching her she didn’t know about. Pendergrass and Kidney Cap would rather yank out their fingernails than give her a positive review.
“I apologize for the silly deception, sir, but reaching you by traditional means wasn’t working.”
“I’m a busy man, Imala. My secretary protects my time.”
So he knew how she had tried to reach him as well. Or maybe he was simply assuming she’d gone to the secretary.
He laughed. “Disguising yourself as a journalist. That’s takes guts, Imala. Guts or stupidity, I’m not sure which.”
“Perhaps a bit of both, sir.”
“And under the guise of doing a feature interview, too.” He shook a finger at her. “Appealing to my narcissism, I see.”
“It seemed the most believable story, sir.”
“Well I’m flattered you would think me important enough to warrant a feature interview in such a reputable magazine.” He crossed his legs. “Well, you have my attention, Imala. I’m all ears.”
She got right to it. “I have evidence, sir, that Gregory Seabright, one of our senior auditors, has been ignoring and in many cases concealing false financial records from Juke Limited for the better part of twelve years.”
“I know Greg, Imala. I’ve known him since grad school. That’s a very serious accusation.”
“There’s more, sir. I also have evidence of financial payments to Mr. Seabright from a small subsidiary of Juke Limited in excess of four million credits.”
Gardona was silent a moment. He was still smiling, but there was no longer any life behind it. “If such an allegation were true, Imala, which I doubt, I can’t imagine Greg would be dumb enough to keep such payments on file or make them easily detectable. He’s one of our top auditors. He would cover his tracks.”
“Oh, he covered his tracks, sir. He covered them with so many layers it’s taken me two months to piece it together. I had to snoop and dig in places not normally accessible to me. It’s a very lengthy thread that I had to follow to connect Mr. Seabright with the payments, but if prosecutors are patient enough, I can connect the dots for them.”
“Prosecutors?”
“Obviously. Juke Limited ships have been exceeding weight limits for transshipments to Earth year after year without paying the required fees and fines. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of credits here. Juke has been paying him off to turn a blind eye and foster illegal tax and tariff practices.”
“And you can prove all this?”
She held up a data cube. “Over three thousands documents.”
“I see. And when did you research and compile all this?”
“After hours. I only stumbled on it because I was studying old files, trying to familiarize myself with some of our larger accounts.”
“This is troubling, Imala. Who else knows about this?”
“Just my immediate boss, Richard Pendergrass.”
“I see. Well I will have to look into this immediately. If this proves true, it would be devastating to the reputation of this agency. I would ask that you keep this quiet until we can conduct an internal investigation.”
He started to get up.
“One more thing, Mr. Gardona. Juke Limited is our largest account. To conceal something this big for this long is too much for one person. I can’t prove it beyond the legal definition of doubt, but I have six other names on this cube whom I suspect are aware of and participating in this practice.”
He took the cube. “I hope you’re wrong, Imala. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
She left his office, and by late afternoon of the following day word was spreading that Gregory Seabright had been terminated. Not suspended. Not given leave. Terminated.
Imala stood at her cubicle—which was smaller than most refrigerators and sometimes just as cold since it was directly below one of the AC vents—and felt better than she had in a long time. She had beaten the Man. She had taken on the giant and slung her rock and hit him dead center in the foreh
ead. Gregory Seabright, dirty money-grubber, was down. And not just Seabright but Ukko Jukes as well, the wealthiest man in the solar system. Or, as Imala knew all too well, one of the most crooked men alive. Yes sir, not even old Ukko Jukes was safe from her justice.
She slapped her desk with the palm of her hand. Now this was auditing. If only her father could see her now. “Auditing?” he had said, when she had told him about her plans for grad school. “Auditing?” He said the word like it left a sour taste in his mouth. “That’s worse than accounting, Imala. You’re not even counting beans. You’re checking to make sure someone else counted beans. That’s the most pointless, fruitless, meaningless career anyone could possibly choose. You’re smarter than that. You can do anything. Don’t waste your life being a bean-counter checker.”
But oh how wrong Father was. Auditing was what made everything work. Without auditing, we’d live in financial barbarism. Markets would collapse. Banks would break. The whole system would crash.
But you couldn’t explain that to Father. He’d throw up his hands at talk like that. But taking a crook, putting a bad guy in prison, that Father could grasp, that was something he could wrap his head around.
Once she saved up enough to send a holo to Earth and once Lunar prosecutors got involved and the media caught wind, she could contact home and say, “See, Father? Your little girl taking on Ukko Jukes. That big enough for you?”
Pendergrass poked his head over the wall of the cubicle. “You heard about Seabright?”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“You have anything to do with that?”
She shrugged.
“Come on, Imala. You told me he was duping. I didn’t think it was possible. I thought you were witch-hunting. You know, fresh out of school and ready to take on the world. All that idealistic crap. We get people like that sometimes.”
Imala said nothing.
“Guess I was wrong,” said Pendergrass. “I should’ve listened to you. My mistake.”
Earth Unaware (First Formic War) Page 37