“Sure, I’d like that, very much. How about night after tomorrow?” Oh, yeah. I could tell she was studying her calendar on her implant by the far away look in her eyes. She smiled.
“Oui, I am free that night. It is a date.” A smile of anticipation.
“Works for me.” I would work her for all I was worth.
On the way to the port I stopped at the City Cafeteria on the edge of the Entertainment District that was closest to the port. As an employee you were entitled to three free square meals a day. Or you could patronize any one of a number of restaurants in the Entertainment district if you wanted to buy your own. The cafeteria was on the border of the District, sandwiched between the spacers hostel and the bed and breakfast for new arrivals to the city, for those who hadn’t been assigned permanent housing and were waiting for it. Or for those who were within a week or less of shipping out.
I stopped in and had a pulled pork sandwich with baked beans and crispy French fries washed down with some sweet tea. Courtesy of the Head Chef, Chief Cook Bill Inouye another friend and occasional poker buddy. The food was delicious and filling. Bill was glad to see me and passed on the regards of his wife. I told him poker was off for another week or so, but that I would be in touch. Then we headed for the port. We walked out and stepped onto the moving walkway that ran down the center of the Entertainment District.
We stepped off the end of the main East-West moving walkway at its Western end where it faced the East Gate of the Space Port. To the South of us was the main Admin complex, to the North were the warehousing and manufacturing district. Just North of that was the farm complex. Scattered around these compounds were the maintenance centers. Beyond the port were the mines and smelters. The ore, after being ripped from the guts of the planet, was smelted down into pellets which were loaded into great bins which were in turn loaded onto the great freighters. The freighters came in with bins loaded with machinery and equipment, from tools to Robots, things that weren’t easily made on planet as well as the one raw material that was so important to human survival anywhere in the solar system, water. Every ship also bore passengers, the necessary crew to man the vessel and replacement workers for the colony.
The ships that bore out the raw material for the machinery of civilization also took out personnel that were done with their stay, their tour, on planet. Less and less water was needed to be imported as the supply in the city was constantly reused through recycling, but as the city grew and expanded and more people came to live on planet, more new water was needed. Which made the imports cycle up and down. Lately, with the city expanding more water was needed. Water was also crucial in making O2 for the bases air supply and H for fuel cells to power equipment and local transport, like skimmers.
We stepped off the end of the walkway and looked at the big main gate which was big enough for large equipment to move through, cranes, bulldozers, cargo trucks and the like. We made for the smaller personnel gate to it’s left.
I stopped in front of the comm panel to its left and announced myself.
“Roving maintenance tech. Dunn, Drew. Here to see dock worker Harris, Tim.” I would have called ahead, but I figured the less warning the better.
“Hey dog, what’s going on?” Came Tim’s voice from the speaker in its warm contralto.
“Just thought I’d stop by and check you out my friend.”
“I’ll be right down.” After a few minutes the lock opened up and Tim stepped out smiling to shake my hand and give me a hug. His finely chiseled black face glowed with a warmth at seeing me alive and in one piece as he gave me the once over. He did a double take as his eyes landed on Jazz.
“You don’t seem any the worse for wear. Who’s this?”
“Oh, Tim, this is Jasmine 2337, my personal Med. Unit.” She did a slight curtsy. Tim dipped his head in acknowledgment.
“Nice to meet you. So rank doth have its privilege, huh? So what can I do for the only resident hero on this rock?” I laughed.
“Well, as you might have heard I’ve been offered a promotion to any section I like that’ll have me, and I thought I’d use that as an opportunity to come down, check you out, maybe cadge a beer.” I had known Tim for years. We had met during my days as a telemarketer when we had worked at the same gig. He never failed to crack me up when he talked like a ‘white guy’. He had a way of changing the pitch and intonation of his voice to sound like an uptight white yuppie from the Mid West. We had become friends over a shared fondness for Guinness. I had once found him a cheap apartment to rent when a noted performance poet friend had been forced to move out due to a lack of funds. Tim had been couch surfing for too long. He had promised to ‘hook me up’ with a female friend, as I was single at the time, but it had never panned out. He had hooked up with the company through his Marine Corp. contacts, he had been in Material Transport in the Corp. His girl friend worked in Rec. as a trainer, she had been a boxer from Finland.
It was Tim who had clued me in to the Company, that they were looking for tech’s. We had come out on the same ship. Him and his girl had signed up for a five year tour.
He took my elbow and guided me to his office, the lock door whispering shut behind us.
Robot crews and their human crew chiefs were hustling everywhere. I looked around.
“Lot of activity around here, huh?” Tim shook his head.
“You know when we showed up there was a ship landing every other week, now we have a ship arriving every week to six days, so we have to unload in two days and reload in two days and prep for take off at the same time. Makes things hectic to say the least. We are ramping up for two flights a week so we’ll have to cut the turnaround time in half by the end of the year.” He opened the door to his office and showed us in.
His desk was against the wall, leaving the office with an open feel, especially with the window/wall across from the door showing the landing pad and docking mechanisms outside. The sun was blasting down so the window was heavily polarized to block the glare. We sat next to him facing his desk and its screen. There were landing timetables displayed on it. Tim reached into a small fridge under his desk and produced two chilled Guinness’s. He handed mine to Jazz who deftly popped the top and handed it to me while he produced a bottle opener and uncapped his. We chinked bottles and drank.
“Aaah, the pause that refreshes.” I said licking my lips. Loved that liquid bread.
“I have a couple cases brought in on every flight.” I raised my bottle.
“Rank doth have its privilege.” He chuckled.
“Damn right.”
“And you can pay for a months supply by selling one or two cases on base.”
“Damn straight.” We chinked bottles again. I laughed.
“Damn straight skippy.” I replied. He settled back in his chair.
“So tell me what really brings you here, other than my beer.” He looked at me frankly.
“Sum bitch. You know me too well. I was gonna say I had experience in shipping and receiving back in my misspent youth and see if I could get an angle on the whole smuggling outfit and how it hooks into Supply, cause it looks like someone down there tried to kill me and did kill Dave.” A look of incredulity came over his face.
“No shit!” I shook my head, a frown on my face.
“No shit bro.” He looked me in the eye.
“So you on a recon mission then.” A serious gleam in his eye.
“Exactly.” He waved me over to his desk console.
“Yeah, Security’s a pathetic fuckin’ joke. Fuck those motherfuckers. Let’s see what we can dig up here.” He started touching the panel.
“Hold on, let me get Jake patched in.” I called Jake and gave him the heads up. He told me he would co-ordinate with Power and Ecology as soon as he could get a look at the manifests.
“Cool. Back up is always good.” Tim was the number four man in charge of the docks. Chief of loading and unloading. He was under Amad Jackson, who was in charge of allocation, shipping and receiving
. Number two man was Winn Lee, who was in charge of manifests and personnel. Jack Hopson was the number one, he oversaw the whole section.
“Rumor has it that Winn Lee is tied in to the Black Market Underground. Those guys don’t fuck around. I can get you in cause I have to have copies of all the manifests. For every wing nut to quart of water that comes in to every pound of pellets that goes out. Here take a look.” We started with the most recent loads coming in and tracked back. Lee seemed to be in the clear. Of course. If he was in the Black Market Underground he was dialed in and hooked up. The BMU was said to be a mythical descendant of an old Chinese tong that dated back to the Opium Wars and the foundation of Hong Kong two hundred and fifty years in the past.
They had been forced to go legit with the legalization of drugs, gambling and the sex trade and the easing of available credit in the past half century. They were said to own a quarter of the biggest banks in old China.
Jim Simpsons name seemed to be coming up on the bulk of drug, alcohol, SexBot and water orders for the city. After a bit Tim shook his head.
“What?” I asked looking at him out of the corner of my eye.
“Well, there’s some discrepancies I’ve caught. He puts in requisitions for units in lots of 125, but we only receive lots of 120. Look here.” He pointed at the screen. He had highlighted over a dozen shipments in the last six months with discrepancies. Nothing so large in and of itself, but taken together...
“Wow. They’re small and irregular in timing. Like every other, or every other, other shipment. But there’s a definite pattern, and taken together that’s a whole bunch of missing product. Shit, if he’s selling the excess off planet, we could have quite a web of criminality here. What I really want to know is how does he get the stuff you can’t legally get here, here. You know, for Pete Simms, the scrounger.” I noticed something then. The water volume’s constant fluctuation. It differed from shipment to shipment. I pointed that out to Tim. His eyes went wide as he studied the data.
“Goddamn. Sneaky fuck. So he’s smuggling it in the water tanks.” I nodded.
“Yeah, which just helps preserve most of his product as the water freezes in space in the tanks, which is great if you’re bringing in a shipment of beef. Doesn’t effect booze at all. And you just wrap cloth in plastic and you’re good to go.” I hit my comm link.
“You get all that Jake?”
“Good and clear.”
“Cool, get it ready to download to Fonagy and I’ll let him know to expect it.”
“Gotcha.” I raised my by now empty beer.
“Crack two.” Which he did. We chinked bottles and drank.
“Sounds like you want to talk to Jim Simpson. How does he have anything to do with Dave’s death?” I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.
“Beats hell outta me. Like to get a hold of him, but he’s gone missing. Since yesterday.”
“So, what, you think he sells the extra company shit off planet, then buys and ships in other shit and then...” Tim rolled his eyes.
“Yeah and then sells it and pockets all of it. Then routes it through the gambling concessions and funnels it into a personal slush fund. What a racket.” I took a chug.
“Maybe he pissed the BMU off and they disappeared him.” We kicked around some more detailed ideas of the grizzly demise of Jim Simpson and drank a couple more beers. Eventually I called Chief Fonagy and gave him a heads up to expect the info from Jake.
He told me to be careful, I was stirring up a hornets nest and signed off.
“Fonagy tells me to watch my ass.” I waved the beer bottle towards the door.
“It’s almost dinner time, wanna grab a bite?” Tim gave me the thumbs up.
“Sure. Here, you should have one of these, you deserve one.” He reached into a drawer and came up with a sheathed, belted porters tool. I looked at him in shock.
“No, man, I know how serious you guys are about those things, having to earn them.”
“Man after what you survived, you earned it. There’s been talk around the section of presenting you with one, we just haven’t gotten around to figuring out a time to present it to you. So on behalf of the Port Dockers, you are an honorary docker. Wear it with pride.” I stood up and he belted it around my waist. He stood up and shook my hand.
“We carry the trade. Remember our motto, ‘We make it happen.’”
“Hey, you know me, I’m all about moving forward.”
“Amen to that brother. Let’s go eat.” We ended up at the Bounty, an English style pub and notorious spacers bar in the Entertainment District where Tim wolfed down an order of fish and chips and I had the planet famous shepherds pie. All washed down with copious quantities of Guinness. We then headed for the Black Hole for after dinner drinks. Afterwards we hit the moving walkway for the residential area. I was leaning on Jazz for support as we hit the corridor branching where Tim would leave us for his place.
As I extended my hand to shake with Tim I felt a draft towards the back of my head and without thinking, ducked. A length of pipe whipped past where my head had been. As fast as drunk lightening I pulled my new Porter’s tool and lashed out connecting with the extended arm bearing the pipe slashing it good. It dropped the pipe.
Jazz who had been grabbed from behind was breaking the grip of her assailant and was jamming an elbow back into his face. There was a mild crunching sound as her elbow made contact and her attacker dropped to the floor. Behind me I could hear Tim landing a blow and a body fall.
“COME ON MOTHERFUCKER!” Shouted Tim as I planted the butt of the Porter’s tool on the side of my attackers head. The blow dropped him like a sack of bricks. I looked up at a retreating figure and looked at Jazz.
“Go get him doll.” She sprang off at near warp speed. That guy was toast. I surveyed the wreckage laying around us. The surge of adrenaline had blasted away my muzzy drunkenness. Tim was breathing hard as he stood over the sprawled figure of his foe.
“THAT’S WHAT YOU GET, MESSIN’ WIT ME AN’ MA HOMMIES!” Yelled Tim, shaking his fists at the ceiling. Which would have made me laugh normally as Tim was from Atlanta and I was from L.A. He disliked the Dodgers and I hated the Braves, I disliked the Hawks and he hated the Lakers. What we had in common? Similar sick senses of humor and a shared disdain for the dumbasses of the world, which seemed to be most of the population of it. Such is life. I called Fonagy and told him to send a meat wagon. He told me they were already on the way and they literally showed up as he told me that. Looked like the monitoring wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Later, at Security after we had all given our statements and Tim had left for home Fonagy and I went over the vids of the incident. He pointed at the guy who was leveling a length of pipe at my head. The four hooded goons seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
“He’s aiming at the area of your comm link. Trying to disable it so you can’t call for help.” I watched in awe as I whipped out the Porter’s tool and slashed the guy’s arm in replay.
“Yeah and take me out with it.” He pointed at Jazz as she took off after the retreating goon. He broke out with the first smile I had seen him with in days.
“Look at her go.” She took him down after only about twenty five yards.
“He’s clamed up, but we know he’s from Supply. The other three are still unconscious. We know the one that swung on you was from Rec, we’re running the DNA on the other two to make a positive ID. We’ll have Dr. Barber run him through the treatment tomorrow. But in the meantime I’m going to station two guards outside your residence tonight.” I rolled my eyes and said,
“Shit.” He held up a hand.
“Listen. You’re in danger because you’ve figured out a good part of this network and Jim Simpson, if he’s in the loop, he might be afraid you’ll expose it. So you’re at risk.”
“Do you really think he’d come after me, what with all the data recorded in the storage banks. Now that Security has a lock on it?”
“Data can always be
compromised, and then again there is always the revenge factor. Until we have him in custody we should look to your safety.” Hmm, revenge. That hadn’t occurred to me.
“Okay, okay, you can put a couple guys in the living room, if they’ll be quiet.”
“No, no, they can watch from the corridor, that’ll be fine.”
“Where’ll they go to the bathroom if they have to go?”
“They’ll only be rotating on two hour shifts.”
“Oh, well, in that case, fine.”
“Good, in fact I’ll have the first shift escort you two home.”
Which he did.
8.
Twice Bitten...
Day 8
I woke from a dream of the surface. I was naked standing on the dividing line between day and night. I looked down at the red purplish dust between my toes. I looked up to see Dr. Barber in a white low cut set of coveralls standing in the cool darkness, beckoning me with a look, and behind me I knew that Dave was there, on fire, trying to get my attention. He was saying my name, I could hear him over the low roaring of the flames and I woke to hear Karen saying it.
“Drew, wake up sleepy bones. Get up, we have that stupid interview to do in a few minutes.” I shrugged off sleep like a bad habit and sat up and then went to the bathroom to answer the call of nature and bathe up. I took the time to shave off my burgeoning beard and trim up my stash and soul patch. After that, over a cup of coffee I called and left a voice mail for Tim, thanking him for the back up the previous night.
As Karen, Jazz and I left our unit, the two security men who had been keeping watch fell in behind us. On the moving walkway we saw mostly Robots on their way to various tasks. A couple of them waved. I waved back, a little self-consciously. So now I was a hero to Robots too. Unless they were waving at Jazz. Maybe Robots needed Robot heroes. Oh, well...
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