The datapad chimed and Trek answered it to find McCracken on the other side.
“Good morning, Commander. Have you seen the reports regarding the transit system?”
“That’s why I was calling,” McCracken answered. “Glad to know that you’ve decided to keep up with the times.”
“Trying, sir.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“Planning to get to the transportation hub to see what the hell is going on.” Trek tried to sound irked at the situation, hoping that McCracken would think he was becoming more and more serious in his role. “Some heads are going to roll, for sure.”
McCracken seemed taken aback. “That’s… Well, that’s good. Fine. Keep me posted on any progress. McCracken out.”
Trek released a sigh and then let his mind drift back to his discussion with Tweller from the night before.
He had to think of a way to utilize the skills of others to make himself look good. That was his gift in life, after all, right? He’d done it when he was a cadet; he’d done it by using Rebben Coolait to help him solve enough cases that it turned him into a big player; and he’d done it again after Rebben had passed away by taking credit for the man’s books and turning himself into an Interstellar Bestseller. It was—as Tweller had pointed out—Trek’s gift.
All he had to do was find someone smart enough and gullible enough to fill the role that Rebben had once held.
“Good morning, sir,” Elf said as he passed by Trek’s office.
Elf could be the guy, right? He had the smarts, certainly. But did he have the creativity? Robots weren’t known for making stuff up. They were great at finding things, categorizing, building, etc., but creation was not standard fare with them.
He thought about the rest of his new team.
Belchore wasn’t gullible enough and he clearly disliked Trek anyway. Adna was probably gullible enough, but she wasn’t likely to have the skills. Trek could play Torg for a little while, possibly, but it wouldn’t be pretty once he figured things out. Opal? Well, just no.
That left Elf and Lelly, and Lelly already made it well clear that he had no interest whatsoever in being a detective, and Trek’s nose made it abundantly clear that it wouldn’t want to be too close to Lelly on a day-to-day basis.
“Elf?” he called out resignedly.
“Yes, sir?” Elf said as he leaned past the cubicle wall outside of Trek’s office.
“Have you seen the news this morning?”
“Seen it? Brother, I was in it!”
“Pardon?”
“Sorry, sir,” Elf answered as his eyes dimmed slightly. “Uh, you’re talking about the transit system, right?”
“Right.”
“It’s a mess out there. Every which way you look there’s nothing but stopped speeders. Kinda ruins their name, if you ask me.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“You’re asking me, sir?” Elf said slowly.
“You’re my second-in-command, Elf. If I can’t elicit the input from my second-in-command then I’m in a sad state of disrepair. Now, if you’re feeling uncomfortable in this position, I can certainly look elsewhere in the group. I’m sure that one of the other team…”
“Sir,” Elf said as if grabbing a brass ring, “I would recommend we go to the transportation hub.”
Damn, thought Trek, that was no different than what he’d come up with on his own. Either he was getting better at this game, which he found it difficult to believe, or Elf was no better at it than he was.
“Right.” He stood up and began heading out. “Let’s get to it, then.”
“Should I inform the other agents, sir?”
“No, let’s let them keep sifting through clues on the water treatment case. We need to get some hard evidence there anyway.”
As they passed back into the lobby, Lelly was spraying some type of aerosol under his arms. “Have a nice day, sirs,” he said.
“Much better, Lelly,” Trek said with a whiff as they exited the office.
Getting to the transportation hub took quite a while since they had to walk. Pedestrians were standing around pointing up at the frozen vehicles as if they were some sort of novelty. To be fair, it was probably the first time anything like this had ever happened on Quarn.
When they finally arrived, Trek had to sit down on one of the benches for a minute to catch his breath.
“Shall I go inside and start questioning the crew, sir?”
“Solid plan, Elf. I’ll be in shortly.”
Elf walked over to one of the I.S. agents and showed him his badge. The agent stepped aside and Elf disappeared into the building.
Trek took a quick peek around and dipped his hand into his pocket. It’d been a rough morning and he needed something to settle his nerves. Soothe was just the ticket. Besides, he was just being who he was, right?
After his mind fell into a nice deep rhythm, Trek strutted past the I.S. agent. All hell was breaking loose as he walked in. There were people running this way and that, shouting orders at each other, asking questions, or just generally complaining about the unfairness of it all. He couldn’t quite blame them as it was a bit of a pain in the ass having your entire world fall apart the moment you rolled out of bed. Fortunately for him, Soothe made it not so drastic.
“You there,” he called out to a bot who was zipping by.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m looking for one of my agents. His name is Elf.”
The lights on its chest blinked rapidly for a moment. “Second floor, sir, twenty steps straight ahead. You’ll find him working with the engineering team.”
“Thanks.”
Elf was standing at one of the terminals while a team of Awkians stood discussing options. Trek sidled over next to his second-in-command and asked what was going on.
“I’ve found something interesting here,” Elf said, keeping his voice low. “It seems that someone accessed the main system and set in a crash sequence that couldn’t possibly happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you look here,” Elf said, pointing to the screen, “you’ll see.”
Trek looked and saw nothing but a bunch of zeros and ones. “Nope, can’t read that.”
“Really?” Elf said, casting a glance at Trek. “Oh, right, I suppose not. Sorry. Well, it’s like this: The crash robots are sent to handle any accidents that may occur on station. These are extremely rare, but whenever a crash does happen, that section of the grid is stopped, in that lane only, until the robots arrive. There are crash robots all over the system, though, so the average wait time is less than three minutes. You getting all of this?”
“Go on,” Trek said with a roll of his eyes.
“The saboteur set up a very interesting scenario where all the crash robots got notified that all of the other robots had crashed. On top of that, the robots were informed that they themselves were involved in a crash. This, in turn, means that all the crash robots were forced to stop their transit sections until another crash unit came to their rescue.” Elf gave Trek a look. “They’re not overly bright robots, mind you.”
“So none of them can leave because they all think they’ve been in a crash,” Trek said while nodding. With Soothe running at full force, he was more easily able to focus since the chaos of life was kept at bay. If life was running smoothly, he wouldn’t have been able to focus at all. That was the beauty of Soothe. It acted on your current situation. If only the stuff weren’t so expensive. “Yeah, I get it. Now what we need to find out is who did it and how we can get the system back on line.”
He moved over to the Awkians who were discussing the situation.
“Good morning,” said Trek, showing them his badge.
“What’s up, man?” one of the Awkians replied casually.
“I’m just wondering what your plan is for getting everything back in functioning order.” Trek pointed out the window at the stalled vehicles. “You may have noticed we have a bit of an emergenc
y on our hands.”
“I hear ya, pal,” the Awkian replied. “Problem is that none of us know what to do to fix it.”
“You don’t?” That seemed rather odd. “Are you not in charge of keeping things running here?”
“Yeah, we are. Problem is that nothing like this has ever happened.” The Awkian didn’t look all that comfortable having this discussion, and his comrades were busily staring at their feet. “The system has been running perfectly for over one hundred years, pal.”
Trek nodded. “And there are no manuals or robots or anything to help with this sort of thing?”
“Manuals?” the Awkian replied while glancing at his coworkers. “That’s an interesting idea. We’ll have to check into that.”
There didn’t seem to be much urgency on their part. Maybe he’d just run into a junior set of workers instead of those truly in charge of the system? He glanced at their name tags and saw that they were all senior engineers.
“Does anyone in this department know how to fix this problem?” ventured Trek.
“Nah. We’re the main group, dude. We know all there is to know about this stuff.”
“And yet you don’t know how to fix it.” Trek found this amazing. “What exactly do you do around here?”
“Hang out, listen to some tunes, watch the tube, and do Soothe mostly.”
Okay, so that he could understand.
“Do you ever actually work?”
“Sure we do,” the Awkian said, looking a bit miffed at the accusatory tone Trek was using. “Once a month we have to press a green button in the main room.”
“What’s that button do?”
“Hooks us up with our paychecks.”
Trek groaned. “Right.”
“Everything is back online, dude,” said another Awkian who was pointing out at the moving vehicles. “I guess it fixed itself.”
“Right on,” the main Awkian said while walking away with his crew. “Earned some chill time, gang. Let’s party.”
A few seconds later, Elf stepped back around the corner and nodded at Trek.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you all to it,” Trek said with a bow toward the Awkians and then signaled Elf to follow him out the door before further discussions could ensue. “I’m assuming you fixed the system?” he asked Elf pointedly.
“Yes, I did, and while I was in the computer…”
“In the computer?” Trek interrupted. “You were in the computer?”
“Don’t take that literally,” Elf replied. “Anyway, I traced the source of the transmission. The signal originated from Internal Security. Specifically, from Captain Broog’s desk.”
Trek took out his datapad, feeling a bit triumphant. He knew that partnering with a robot was a smart move. He put in a connection to McCracken.
“McCracken here.”
“Hello, Commander, I have news.”
“I’m listening.”
“First off, the transit has been restored.”
“So I noted.”
It wasn’t the response Trek was hoping for, but it was better than being chastised again. “Second, we’ve traced the location of the terminal that caused all of this havoc. It originated at Captain Broog’s desk inside of the I.S. building.”
“Son of a bitch,” McCracken said. “I’ll contact his deputy and have that bastard arrested. You contact the space ports and lock them down. If Broog catches wind that we’re onto him, he’ll be making a straight line off station, and as soon as his deputy puts out the call, Broog will know.”
“Agreed, Commander.”
“My question,” said McCracken after a pause, “is who is Broog working for?”
“I thought he worked for The Committee, sir,” Trek said as if that were obvious.
McCracken’s face showed an odd look of relief. “You think The Committee is behind this, Captain Gibbons?”
“Huh?” Trek hadn’t expected that response in the least. “Uh, I didn’t say that, sir. I just said that Broog reports to them.”
“Yes, but your statement implies your subconscious is leaning in that direction, wouldn’t you agree?” McCracken was chewing on his lip now. “I must say, too, that the members of The Committee have been acting rather strange of late. Mercy me, it would make a lot of sense if they were the responsible party for all of these attacks. What do you think?”
“I…uh…well…”
“Something to look into, I would imagine,” McCracken said, thoughtfully. “For now you’d better get those space docks locked down. McCracken out.”
Trek stood there staring at Elf.
Did McCracken really think that The Committee would have caused such distress on the very station they were sworn to serve? An even better question was: could they have caused it? It would be the perfect crime since nobody would expect it, but what would they gain?
“Space ports are on lockdown, sir,” Elf said. “They’re ushering in additional Probe Units to check both incoming and outgoing passengers until further notice.”
Coming Together Now
McCracken clicked off his datapad and felt a wave of relief.
Now that Broog was being framed, and Trek himself had connected the dots—even if it did require a little help—it was only a matter of time before the Gordo Galaxy was fully under the command of Monty McCracken.
For the first time in months, possibly even years, the Supreme Commander smiled a true smile. He had waited a long time for this moment. Soon the pointless reign of The Committee would be no more. Gordo Galaxy member planets would report to a new leader and a new regime, one that would take them from the stagnant present into a future filled with hope and purpose.
Monty McCracken knew full well that a military-run government was the only style of leading party that could get the job done in a consistent and fair manner. It had been proved time and again that people responded best to discipline, even outside of the bounds of the military establishment. Hell, even the school he had attended as a boy taught him the difference between the carrot and the stick.
And discipline is exactly what they would get.
His plans were simple: cut the red tape; stick people like Riggo—and, for that matter, Trek—in prison; put the members of The Committee on a long ship ride to a distant galaxy; and make sure that there were consequences for poor performance, from the lowest worker to the highest CEO.
The days of excelling at mediocrity were at an end. No more would people be allowed to accept being less than they could be. Those who didn’t make the cut would be removed and shipped off to the same place that he planned on sending The Committee.
He would leave that to Joolahk.
As long as a person gave 110% on a daily basis, they would be given the benefit of the doubt—even if they didn’t quite measure up to those more talented. McCracken wasn’t a cruel leader, after all, just an exacting one. He would demand the best out of each person regardless of race, creed, religion, or personal station. Those who gave their best would be considered a success; those who did not would be removed, permanently.
Although it was completely out of character for him, McCracken simply could not help doing a little happy dance before he made a call to Joolahk to tell her the good news.
“Gibbons really figured out that it came from Broog’s office?” Joolahk said.
“Amazed me too,” McCracken replied with his eyebrows up. “If anything, this was the most difficult mystery I’d provided for him.”
“Maybe he just needed a real challenge.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it, but you may be right.” McCracken shrugged. “Anyway, I have him locking down the space docks until further notice. This is perfect since now we have a reason to shut off incoming and outgoing vessels until Broog is caught.”
“Are you saying we’re ready? I should bring the armada in?”
“Yes, Joolahk,” McCracken said, finally. “Tonight. I only have one more task to arrange before then.”
“Station power?”
“You got it.”
Did Not Think of That
Trek and his crew hit the nearest spaceport to check if anything had turned up regarding Broog. Nothing had, as yet, but the Awkian Probe Corp (APC) appeared to be dutifully working their posts.
“Get any more evidence on Kretiz?” said Trek to the rest of the crew.
“Nope,” Belchore replied. “No finger prints or anything. Not even a hair sample.”
“That’s odd,” said Trek.
“Not really,” Torg offered. “Plenty of ways to cover your tracks when you’re doing something nasty.”
“One of those takes-one-to-know-one kind of things, Torg?”
Torg gave Trek a hard stare. “Let’s keep the past in the past.”
“Fair enough.” Trek turned toward the only female on the squad. “What do you think, Adna?”
“Huh? Yeah, sure, I guess.”
“Sorry? You guess what?”
“Right,” she said and then walked away.
Trek looked at Belchore.
The Worge just shrugged at him. “You hired her.”
“Actually, no, I didn’t. You were all assigned to me, if you recall.”
Belchore shrugged again.
“But who tainted the water?” asked Opal. “Broog?”
“That assumes he’s the inside man for Kretiz,” noted Torg.
“If we jump to the conclusion that Kretiz is involved at all,” Elf said, “then it would make logical sense for him to hire someone on the station who could access anywhere, but I’d guess it was Broog for an entirely different reason.”
Trek leaned back on the rail that was overlooking the ships in the dock. “Why?”
“I just found a video,” Elf said.
“You just found it?” Trek said with a grimace. “We were there for an entire day and you’re just now finding a video?”
“It was stuck in an auto-save loop,” Elf said with a shrug before turning his datapad around. “Couldn’t get to it before.”
The Rebellion Hyperbole Page 10