“A nightclub,” Drew said, dumbfounded. It revealed a side of Curtis he’d never expected.
“Yeah, but that’s not why I’m here. I’ve got some information you might find interesting.”
“What information?” Drew wasn’t buying this laidback, amenable Curtis. A security team on the other side of the hatch was probably waiting for a signal.
Curtis took a couple of steps toward them but stopped when Drew tensed and flexed his blaster hand. “The Temperance has requested clearance to depart on schedule tomorrow morning. Chief Fitzwilliam granted the request. I was a little surprised at that. What’s really interesting is the Praetorians booked passage.”
“No one’s questioned them yet?” Drew knew the answer.
“No time. Besides, Fitzwilliam suspended the investigation until the Golden Tracer gets here. Odd that he’s letting the Temperance go before then.”
“Does he know the Praetorians are leaving?” Drew asked, similarly puzzled.
“He should. It was in my shift report. I assume he read it—maybe not.”
Letty stepped out from behind Drew. “We can’t let the Praetorians go before they’ve been questioned. They may be murderers as well as technology terrorists. We’ve got to stop them. Maybe if we turn ourselves in and tell Fitz . . . ”
Drew was about to caution her not to act too fast without considering all the ramifications when Curtis offered a suggestion.
“You could follow them onto the Temperance,” he said flatly.
“How would we do that?” Drew asked. “The minute we step foot back on the station we’ll be taken into custody.”
“There are extravehicular mobility units in the miners’ area. They used them to inspect the armature during construction. They appear to be in good shape. You wouldn’t need to return to the station.”
“Okay. But how exactly do we board the Temperance from space? Even if we can sneak on, where would we hide?” Drew asked. He was still suspicious of Curtis’s motives, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for the short run. He glanced periodically at the hatch, still expecting it to open at any minute and a security team to file in.
“You got a processor?” Curtis reached slowly into the inside pocket of his jacket, keeping his eyes on Drew as he did. He pulled out a data vial and offered it to Drew. “This is Miss Taleen’s travel documents . . . Rebecca Richards’s travel documents, to be more accurate. She can just book passage back on the Temperance. No one on the ship ties her with the explosion or anything else that’s happened here over the last three days. She could book a double for herself and her brother . . . or husband.”
“Brother,” Letty said quickly.
Too quickly, Drew thought, discouraged. “Security is sure to be watching every ship departing. As soon as Rebecca Richards books passage, and with a brother, they’ll be waiting.”
“Right, but they’ll be waiting dockside. When the two of you don’t show, they’ll think they scared you off.”
Curtis still hadn’t said how they’d board the Temperance from space, but he had something in mind. “Where would I get documents?” Drew asked. “I can’t travel under my name. Besides, my records are frozen by now.”
“Actually, I can fix that,” Letty said. “I told you Dad and I have multiple aliases ready to go. I’ll pull one from the company’s database and substitute your image, DNA record, and authenticated palm print.” She looked at Curtis. “Can you provide those records?”
“I could.”
Drew detected the quid pro quo in Curtis’s response. “You still haven’t said how we’d get on the Temperance.”
“I have an associate,” Curtis said carefully.
Here we go, thought Drew. He gave Curtis a disgusted look.
Curtis shrugged, outwardly unfazed by Drew’s opinion of him. “I’m holding a package for my associate. But, since the crew’s been confined to the ship, I couldn’t deliver it without exposing myself. Just before they depart, they’ll need to pay their water fee. There’ll only be two crew members in the cargo bay manning the coupling controls. My friend can pressurize the maintenance airlock on the opposite side and let you in unseen. From there you can check in with the purser. The purser will think you boarded from the station. If he bothers to look at the passenger manifest and finds you didn’t register, he’ll chalk it up to crew error.”
“What’s in the package?” Drew asked.
Curtis pulled a tightly wrapped package of about four-by-six inches from another pocket. “Is that really important?”
“Utopia tablets,” Drew said, scrutinizing the package.
Curtis shrugged again, his bland expression neither confirming nor denying Drew’s guess.
Letty tugged at Drew’s sleeve. “We can’t stay here, and if we go back there’s no guarantee we can persuade Fitz to delay the Temperance. We’ll be detained, and the Praetorians will get away.” She stopped abruptly, morphing into her self-assured, mega-mogul persona. She let go of Drew’s sleeve, turned to Curtis, and stepped forward, shoulders squared, chin up, her hand held out to accept the data vial and package. “We’ll do it.”
Curtis handed the items over, wearing the smug smile of a man who knew he held the winning hand.
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
“What’s wrong?” Letty frowned and watched Drew apprehensively.
They were back in their temporary quarters. With Curtis’s help, she’d downloaded alias files from the Taleen Industries database. As promised, Curtis had provided Drew’s official DNA and print records, and she merged the two sets of documents to complete his new identity. She’d pay for their passage using the generous expense account of the vice president in charge of interstellar promotions, whatever that was. The documents indicated that David Jacobs had held his position for three years, reporting directly to Rebecca Richards. She liked that bit of irony.
While she was at it, Letty created her own new identity. She thought it unwise to continue using the Rebecca Richards cover. Mr. Jacobs would be traveling with his personal assistant, Tina Kingsbury.
Drew hadn’t heard her. They sat on their respective cable spools, Drew watching Letty while she worked, apparently deep in thought.
“What’s wrong?” she repeated, nudging him with her foot.
His eyes focused. “What’s wrong? You mean what’s wrong besides what’s wrong?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t trust Curtis.”
“Do we have a choice?”
“No.”
“So . . . ?”
“What’s wrong is, assuming the EMUs are still functioning and we make it to the Temperance alive and undetected, assuming Curtis’s associate is where he’s supposed to be and we board without being caught, and assuming the purser doesn’t suspect anything, what’s the next step?”
“We question the Praetorians.”
“Under what guise? Are we going to attack them and drag them back to our quarters? We’d have to take on all three at once. As far as I can tell, they never leave each other’s side. Someone might question us dragging three monks around by their hoods, so force is out. What’s left?”
“Well . . . ” Letty considered their options. “As a representative of Taleen Industries, it would make sense that you’d want to talk to anyone who’d been on the station when the CEO died in such a bizarre manner.” Her breath caught in her throat, and she blinked rapidly to ward off more tears.
Drew’s expression softened. “That might follow if people knew that Jonas Trammel was actually George Speller in disguise. Or if they knew about the robe we found, and its connection to the monks,” he said. “No one on the Temperance is aware of those things. And what possible excuse could we give for Speller traveling as a humble ship’s crewman, cleaning up after livestock no less? The two of us questioning the Praetorians without an official capacity isn’t going to elicit any major revelations, especially if they’re guilty of something. Besides, you’re missing the obvious.”
“What’s
that?”
“The monks, and anyone else who boarded from Dark Landing, will know me. Even if my suspension goes unannounced officially, it’s not a secret, and word travels fast. The minute someone spots me, they’re going to bring it up to their friends back on the station. I won’t be able to leave our cabin.”
“You can stay in the cabin for the first day or two while I poke around and find out who besides the Praetorians would recognize you and know about your suspension. If we’re lucky, the monks won’t socialize that much. There are two sittings for each meal, one for passengers and one for crew; but, passengers can eat with the crew if they want. We just need to be careful. Maybe we can figure out a disguise.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. Letty’s weariness and frustration were taking their toll. Events were unfolding too fast to form a solid plan, or any plan. They were improvising, and too many obstacles blocked their ability to act freely.
Drew seemed to sense her frustration. “For now, we’ll focus on following the Praetorians. Any idea where they’re going?”
“I assume Earth. Hold on a sec, I’m almost done here, then we can book our own passage.” When she completed the documents, she accessed the Temperance’s scheduled route.
“I’ll book passage through to Earth, but it won’t be a problem if we have to follow the Praetorians off-ship somewhere before then,” she said absently, studying her screen. “We’re headed to Bin first, then to the Camdu moon colony of Prosse. Short stops—only long enough to unload cargo. Then we have a tentative stop at . . . oh, crap!” Letty looked at Drew, eyes wide, “Minerva Station.”
“Minerva Station! I thought we were running from Muck, not to them. If the monks get off there, we can’t follow. But it’ll confirm Muck’s involvement. No one boards Minerva Station uninvited. Where do we go from there?”
“We head back with stops at . . . one . . . two . . . three mining operations. That’s interesting, two of these are owned by Taleen Industries. After that . . . . ” She stopped. “Crap!”
“More crap?”
“Yes. We come back here before a straight shot to Earth.”
“How long?”
“Eleven days out and three back.”
Stabilized wormholes provided one-way shortcuts through space. While light-years measured real distances, travel distances were calculated in days and weeks, or hops. Wormholes appeared in clusters, and in greater numbers than believed centuries earlier. When one was located, there were often others at the opposite end to carry a ship, if not precisely in the reverse direction, then to another cluster with a wormhole headed the right way. As a result, travel times could vary significantly between going to a location and returning to the starting point. The Known Universe resembled a patchwork quilt with vast areas of space still unreachable in real time, and where wormhole access would never be discovered. Try as they might, in the face of such enormity, life-kind would explore only minute bits of the cosmos before the Big Freeze.
“Okay,” Drew said, thinking aloud, “if the monks debark at Minerva Station, we can’t follow. Our only option will be to stay onboard and come back here.”
Letty listened, still studying her screen.
“Once back here, our choices are to continue to Earth or return to Spud. Since there’s a chance we’ll need the EMUs again, and we can’t walk around the Temperance in them or carry them with us during check-in, we’ll tell Curtis’s associate he’ll get his package when he delivers the suits to our quarters.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Letty said. After a few seconds, she turned back to Drew. “Actually, this could work in our favor. It’s our excuse to make the trip out instead of just waiting on Dark Landing for the Temperance’s return. I’ll book passage with brief visits to the two Taleen mining concerns. Taleen representatives would want to visit such remote operations before returning to Earth.”
“Maybe that’s why Fitz is letting the Temperance go, knowing she’ll be returning so soon,” Drew said. “Still, why would he let the monks leave before questioning? They’re central to the investigation. He must not know they’re leaving. I’m curious if Muck’s approved the Temperance’s excursion.”
Letty could only shrug.
She booked a two-bedroom family suite—one of only three suites on the Temperance. Let the other passengers and crew think what they would. The smaller passenger cabins were taken, and the alternative meant bunks or hammocks, which didn’t provide the privacy they needed and wouldn’t fit Mr. Jacobs’s demographic.
When she’d finished, Drew said, “That’s settled then. The game’s afoot.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Let’s find the EMUs and make sure they’re space-worthy.”
The units sat in the mine storage area near the materials loading dock, as Curtis said. They would exit the airlock on the open-space side of Spud, just outside the east cradle arm. Drew explained that when the larger dock, used to move ore to the refinery ships, had been capped, they’d installed smaller airlocks as emergency exits. The facility served as headquarters and dorms during station construction after the mining ceased.
When viewed from a distance, Dark Landing, the armatures, and Spud, resembled a small crab with unnaturally long claws extended in front of it holding a rock—or in this case, a large potato. The armatures bowed out slightly. Rungs and handholds peppered their exteriors every few feet for tethering to the structures—looking just like a crab’s bumpy shell. Anything in the space between the crab’s arms sat in the cradle or the pocket. Anything outside the cradle was open-side or spaceside. Ships docked at the station protruded from the back end of the crab.
Drew inspected the row of eight suits and their compact oxygen/propulsion tanks, going over each one inch-by-inch. Despite the dated design, they looked in good condition. An hour passed before he pulled two complete sets from the rack.
“These will do,” he said, folding the flexible suits over one arm and then slinging the strap for one of the tanks over the opposite shoulder. He motioned for Letty to take the second tank.
She followed him back to the front offices, taking one and a half steps for each of his longer strides. He moved with confidence, and she admired his lean physique. His hair was thick, sandy brown, and probably naturally wavy if he let it grow; instead, a recent trim kept it conservatively short.
She smiled to herself. For now, she’d let him continue thinking he was in charge. To be fair, he hadn’t been cocky about it. That was more her style. Other than duping her to come with him, he’d solicited her opinion at every step. Not that they’d had a surplus of options. He’d given her the lead where she was more knowledgeable, such as with creating fake identities. They made a good team.
Despite finding him attractive, he wasn’t her type romantically. She favored men more clued into the larger universe. While she didn’t know Drew well, he seemed intellectually limited to his personal corner of space. Only Muck knows.
He stopped in front of her, breaking her reverie. They were back at their makeshift quarters.
“Okay, let’s try these babies on and make sure all systems are nominal.” He seemed uncharacteristically nervous.
“Don’t tell me the big, bad security chief’s afraid of taking a walk in space,” she said, with a malicious wink.
“It’s only that I like more than a few millimeters of fabric between me and minus 455 degrees. I saw a desiccated, popsicle-man once in an academy training accident. Not something you forget easily.”
After trying on and testing the equipment, then double- and triple-testing it until Drew seemed satisfied, they packed their duffels and grabbed a bite to eat. He’d suggested they try to catch a couple hours of sleep. Neither of them was successful, judging by the continuous tossing and turning noises that came from the outer office.
Chapter 18: Space Walk
Ships docking at Dark Landing paid a water fee in addition to berthing and MCTT regulatory fees. The water transfer from the ship to the station was made an hou
r or so before departure. Without access to station records, Drew couldn’t know if the Temperance had water reserves enough to pay its fee. They accommodated any ships unable to make their water payments, with the understanding the delinquency must be made up on subsequent visits. Meticulous records were kept.
If the Temperance was unable to pay, with no crew manning the coupling controls for the water transfer, there might not be environmental services in the ship’s cargo bay. And Curtis’s contact wouldn’t be there to meet them. He thought about messaging Curtis, but was undecided how to word his inquiry without implicating him if the message fell under the eyes of someone else. Not that he cared a blow wart’s fart about Curtis, but he’d turn them over to Muck at the slightest pressure. He foresaw other problems.
“Look, we need to go over a few things.” Drew held Letty’s EMU up so she could step into it without dragging it across the rough rock surface of the corridor outside the east airlock.
She placed a hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she stepped into the suit. “Like what?”
Normally, he’d find such close proximity to her distracting, but he was too anxious about their outing. Letty had been spot-on when she teased him about his fear of extravehicular activities. He didn’t like venturing so close to space he could touch it.
“For one thing,” he said, “we won’t be able to communicate through our suits’ open circuits. Someone on the station or a docked ship might intercept our conversation. Since you don’t have a com implant and mine is disabled, that leaves only hand signals.”
“Sounds simple enough.” She pulled the suit to her waist, reached back and inserted her arms into the armholes, then shrugged it up over her shoulders with difficulty. It proved bulky in Spud’s gravity. Drew helped her secure the neck piece.
Transmuted (Dark Landing Series Book 1) Page 12