Mercury Going Down

by Brambach, C. S.

  “I’d sure like to know how you can get a trace on a communication out of the city and we can’t.” I shrugged.

  “Chief, you should call Winn Lee at the port and have him keep an eye out inside the port, just in case she somehow manages to get by your men.” He scowled, but did it.

  “Care to accompany us Doctor?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” Said Lynette.

  After we piled into an electric cart for the ride to the new housing units I asked the Chief to stop at my place for a minute. Just to get a sense of what Karen’s plans might be. He agreed and once there, after lowering the yellow caution barrier, I led the Chief and Lynette through to her studio. The place looked like a hurricane had blown through. I logged onto the computer and keyed up her diary for Lynette to look through while I led the Chief into the bathroom. Forensics had already come and left. There were still snippets of hair and splashes of yellow dye in the sink. There was dried blood on the countertop next to the sink. The tracker was gone, taken by the forensic tech’s no doubt.

  “She always liked yellow.” I said, dismayed. Then thought about it.

  “Hmm.”

  “What?” Asked the Chief.

  “Put out the word that she may have blue hair.”

  “Blue? But there’s yellow in the sink.” He said.

  “More subterfuge on her part. It’s to throw us off, I’m sure.” He nodded and passed the word along on his implant. In the bedroom I could tell a couple of her favorite outfits were missing. As was her best traveling backpack. I went back to the studio.

  Her sketchbook/diary was missing. Lynette looked at me.

  “She is very disturbed Drew. I am so sorry.” Like you just figured this out now? I kept my mouth shut.

  “Susan missed this. Not a very good job on her part.” She added.

  “So fire her.” She shook her head.

  “No, she formed a tight bond with Karen, which is part of several very successful therapy treatments. It just didn’t work in her case. Karen took it wrong and it just added to her psychosis. Which is the danger in such treatments. Susan can learn from this and become a much better therapist.”

  “If she lives.” I said. She nodded.

  “Yes, if she lives.”

  We were at the unit were she had holed up for a night. Forensics immediately went to work looking for DNA and fingerprints in the bathroom, kitchen and at the computer console.

  “Chief, take a look.” Called one of the tech’s from the bathroom. On inspection we discovered a slight blue tinge in the basin. She had been careless and hadn’t completely rinsed the sink out after dying her hair. The Chief looked at me.

  “You called it. Blue hair.” He told the tech to pass the info along. He then sent some of the agents to start canvassing construction workers in the nearest section.

  “Hey Chief, take a look at this.” Said the tech working at the console. I followed the Chief over. The tech was pointing at the screen.

  “She tried to erase her tracks but we have a program that can pry stuff out of the deleted erased bin and check out what comes up.” I peered over the Chief’s shoulder. It was her search record.

  She had been checking out info on mining. Specifically about mining on Mercury. How the mines worked. What it involved to be an iron miner in a low grav, vacuum mine. The Chief straightened and turned to me.

  “Looks like she’s headed for the mine.” I nodded.

  “It makes sense, that’s the one side of the port that is toughest to guard.”

  “Oh, Chief, look here.” The tech had continued his retrieval routine.

  There were sites listed with info on refining, the machines necessary, the process and the transport of the refined material.

  “So she’s hiding out in the mines, before making it to the refining plants to jump a ship out.” The Chief made a call to the port.

  “There’s a ship almost fully laden with ore getting ready to lift off in four hours.”

  Fonagy received a call then and said,

  “Come on.” We made our way to the next section over where one of the agents was talking to a construction worker in the hall.

  “Agent Bronson sir, this gentleman saw something.”

  “And you are?” Asked the Chief.

  “Ted, Ted Buckly.”

  “I’m Chief of Security, John Fonagy, this is Drew Dunn and this is Dr. Lynette Barber, Head of the Psych Department, they’re assisting us in the investigation.” He was in foamcrete spattered grey coveralls. Basically construction consisted of nailing down, or screwing down steel two by fours, attaching a metal lattice work, after you put in the conduit for electrical and fiber optic cables, or plumbing and air vents, and then spraying over the lattice with foamcrete. Then the crews came in to paint on the LED paint so that every or any wall could be a vid screen. Foamcrete was a cross between celufoam and concrete. Celufoam was made from potato cellulose, as there was no petroleum to use for Styrofoam.

  The neat thing about foamcrete was that once it was sprayed and smoothed over it set in a matter of a few hours and didn’t chip or shatter like concrete or wall board. It had a consistency closer to cork board. It also had a huge insulation factor as well.

  Ted, after giving Lynette the once over with an appreciative eye looked at me and held out his hand. I shook it.

  “Nice to meet you Doc. A real honor to meet you Mr. Dunn.” He smiled a hero worshipers grin.

  “Ah, you told the agent that you saw something?” The Chief interrupted.

  “Oh, yeah, she kinda took me by surprise.” The Chief stared at him.

  “She who?” He asked.

  “Uh, some woman, she went running by, looked like she came out of one of the just completed units down the hall.” The Chief waved to one of the agents who came over and handed him a picture of Karen.

  “Is this her?” He asked holding the picture up to Ted’s face. Ted took the picture and studied it for a half minute.

  “Yeah, this could be her. Only her hair was shaved to about as short as you could get it and still hold a color. And she was wearin’ a camo suit, the only reason I got a look at her face is that she didn’t have the hood up.” The Chief looked at me.

  “What color was her hair?” He asked Ted taking the photo back.

  “Why, it was purple.” The Chief rolled his eyes.

  “Thanks Ted. Boone?” He looked at one of the agents who took the photo from Ted.

  “Yes sir?”

  “Get the word out. Our suspect now has very short purple hair.”

  “Yes sir.” The Chief looked at us.

  “Guess we’d better head over to Mining and Processing Control.” He waved at a couple of the agents that had finished canvassing construction workers, told one of them to stay behind and help the forensics tech close up the unit that Karen had hid out in and then waved the other one and us to the cart and, lights flashing, headed at full speed to Mining and Processing.

  On the way he received a call from the tech that was going over Karen’s search logs.

  “Well, that clinches it.” He said from behind the wheel.

  “What?” I asked.

  “She pulled up the schematics for the cargo hold of a freighter.”

  “Sure, she hitches a ride with a load, then, once off planet, sneaks in through an access hatch and hides in the pantry. Or the Med Unit. Till they make landfall at Luna, where she sneaks off and melds into the crowds on base. Hit’s her slush fund stash, creates a new identity, maybe buys some plastic surgery, you can get all that on Luna, cheap, and then heads out for Mars or Venus. Simple. Create a new identity, and hire back on with one of the other companies that needs help and ship out. All done in a couple weeks.”

  “She’s in for a surprise, we’ve put a lock on her secret credits stash. We can have her picked up with in five minutes of trying to access it.”

  “Yeah, remind me to change the password on my accounts.” Lynette patted my knee.

  “Drew, change the pass
word on your accounts.” I shook my head and trying not to laugh, made the changes over my implant.

  “Don’t be surprised if she can get around any lock outs you put in the system, or if she has another stash somewhere else. She’s brilliant and sneaky.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Said the Chief, a grim look on his face.

  “I think it would be best if we caught her here.”

  “That’s why I’m flooring it.” The Chief had a very determined look on his face.

  He was going to get his man. Or in this case, his woman.

  After dodging heavy traffic in the hallways through the residential and admin areas, we made some good time as we skirted the farm section and then had to slow again making our way amongst the equipment in the corridor that separated the farms from the mine. Fork lifts carrying bales of lettuce jostled around small combines and portacranes used in expanding the outer walls of the city. Roughly half the city was comprised of the farm area. It was bordered on it’s lower side, its Southern side, by the residential section and on its left side, its Western side, by the mine. The mine and processing center took up maybe twenty five percent of the city’s surface area. But it was deep and sprawling underground. It took up ten times the space of the surface city underneath the ground. And it was growing daily.

  We were met at Mine Control by the head Geologist and titular head of Mining and Processing, Ka Ching. I tried not to snicker when I was introduced. One hundred years prior, I would have laughed out loud. I remembered a reference in the history books to old cash registers going ‘ka-ching’ when ever they were opened. I wondered what sound he thought of when ever another ship load of ore left the planet ahead of schedule. It was rumored his bonus’s were huge. The biggest in the system. Only it got better when I was introduced to his number two man, the guy in charge of the Processing Center.

  “Chief Fonagy, Dr. Barber, Mr. Dunn, this is my number two, Ah Cheu.”

  “God bless you.” I said. No body laughed. Ooops!

  “Er, thank you. It is an honor to meet such an illustrious person.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Ah Cheu.”

  “Gesundheit.” Said Lynette, smiling as she understood the joke. The Chief rolled his eyes.

  “All right. Could we go to the monitoring section, I believe my office briefed you on the reason for our visit?”

  “Yes they did, right this way.” Said Ka and with an arm gesture led the way to the Command Control Center for the mines.

  We were led to a large room filled with several hundred men and women seated at vid screens working controls that ran all sorts of mining equipment and Robots. The far wall held a giant window on the mines up close and beyond, the processing area and beyond that, the port where a great freighter was lit up in all its mighty glory. Blue flashes of arc light from the processing machines played over the exterior of the ship.

  Everywhere there were front end loaders of every shape and size, from massive giants that scooped up the raw ore from where the conveyor belts deposited it on a shelf of the pit to run it to processing to small ones that scooped up the tailings for use in exterior wall construction of the ever expanding city. The pit itself spewed forth a great constant plume of red dust as if the planet were surrendering its life blood in a great volcanic expulsion of dry lava.

  Almost everything in the mines and processing was done through remote control, except for repairs which were handled by live humans in surface suits.

  “Right over here.” Said Ka leading us to a section of monitors and watchers that weren’t working controls. The floor was painted orange in this section. It was the smallest section. Ka caught me checking out the floor color.

  “The sections are color coded for their specific tasks. Mining, which is the largest, is virtually all about control, and is colored red. Processing, the next largest is colored blue. The next smallest is yellow, which is loading, or shipping. Orange is for repair, which is purely monitoring, as the live humans simply are watched and given helpful info and directions. As you can see, every crew man has a camera on his helmet. See here? These two men are looking into the guts of a ore shuttle that has broken down. This might interest you.”

  He pointed to a screen that was obviously a helmet cam. From the bouncing the guy was walking towards something. He stopped in front of an airlock door.

  “That’s one of our emergency rest and recovery pods. Through out the mine we have environmental pods set up with plenty of oxy, water, toilet facilities and rations for survival in case there’s a collapse or some suit problems develop with our maintenance workers. We sent two men down because, as you see on this screen here, we detected an unauthorized use of one of the pods.” He pointed to the screen next to the helmet cam shot. It was the inside of a rescue or rest and recovery pod.

  All we could see was a messed up bed and some used ration wrappers lying on the floor. The shot from the helmet cam entered the pod and started to look around. It went to the bathroom and found water in the bottom of the shower and a used white surface suit crumpled in a corner. It looked like the body of some dead alien left to rot. The camera view left the bathroom and went to the spare suit locker and right away we knew something was wrong. A repairman’s orange suit was missing.

  “What do you want to bet she’s mixed in with a repair unit that’s headed for the port.” I said.

  “Do you have any crews working the processing area right now?” Asked the Chief.

  “Why, yes we do as a matter of fact.” Replied Ka.

  “Control, get four men into repair suits and have them get to the processing area next to the port.” Said the Chief into his implant. Ka led us to a different set of screens.

  “Here they are, see, here’s the crew. Huh, how many men are assigned to work on that crew?” He asked the monitor watcher. There looked to be seven workers working on the end of a loading conveyor.

  “Uh, six, I believe sir. Yes, six.” Ka looked at the Chief.

  “Can you alert the crew chief to act as if nothing is wrong, but to slow the work down till we can get some men out there?” Said the Chief. Ka shrugged.

  “They’re almost done, but we can try.” The Chief was talking into his implant again.

  “Alert the freighter to station men at the cargo hatches to prevent her from entering the ship.” On the screen one of the men, presumably the crew chief, was gesturing toward the shop.

  “He’s sending two of his men to get a larger pry bar and some different spanners.” Said Ka.

  “Why not send for a Robot?” Asked Lynette.

  “We’re short Robots at this time, we’re at the height of the routine maintenance cycle right now.”

  “Lucky for us.” Said the Chief. Looked like we were finally getting a break. The rest of the repair crew seated itself on the end of the ramp. Till one of them gestured at the ship and started to make his or her way up the ramp. The crew member left the picture.

  “Can we get another view?” Asked the Chief.

  “Sure.” Said Ka.

  “What?” Said the Chief to his implant. Just then, four Security Agents arrived at the base of the loading conveyor belt. Right then the view changed on the monitor to the open hatch of the ship. Two crew men in baby blue suits were standing in the doorway and one was pointing towards the docks.

  “She’s made a break for it!” Said the Chief. “Tell the men to converge on the docks!”

  “Tell the men to get back to work on the conveyor. We want that ship to take off on schedule.” Said Ka to the monitor watcher, who nodded his head and complied.

  “Let’s go!” I said. We hustled back to the cart and made all speed to the nearest lock to the docks.

  “She’s dodged the agents at the port, she’s headed for the main gate!” Said the Chief, spinning the wheel of the cart to dodge a fork lift exiting the port.

  The Chief had the lights flashing and added a blasting siren to that.

  We were brought up short by a collision between a forklift
and a cart carrying base personnel that were obviously outbound. Obviously because they were taking their bags from the stopped cart and were still smiling.

  “Damn it! Clear those vehicles, NOW!” Shouted the Chief at the Robot driver of the cart and the human forklift operator who were standing surveying the damage.

  “Look Chief, there she goes!” Said Lynette pointing at an orange surface suited figure that darted from the just opened airlock on the other side of the blocking wrecks.

  She was without the helmet and her purple head stood out like a lone hot dog on a platter of hamburger patties. Quite the contrast against the orange of the suit. I found out later she had used the helmet to take out an agent who almost stopped her with his stun gun.

  I bolted from the cart and jumped the wrecks in a single bound.

  “Karen, WAIT!” I shouted. She barely glanced over her shoulder as she plowed into a worker who was just getting onto a bicycle. She quickly picked up the spilled bike and, mounting it, started pedaling away at full speed.

  “What the fu-” The guy she had knocked down was saying as I knocked him down again in a Keystone Cops maneuver to run to the line of charging segue’s for courier use near the end of the moving walkway.

  I unplugged the nearest unit and jumping up on it, pointed it after Karen and sent it full speed after her.

  She wound her way through the crowds of foot traffic like the pro she was. One of my fondest memories of our times on Earth was riding our bikes from the small house we shared in Silverlake to the Crustic Bar and Grill in Los Feliz. We would down Bloody Marys before going home to tank up on wine and cannabinol before slow languorous fucks.

  I freaked myself out with my recklessness. At one point I was shouting at people to get out of the way on the moving walkway as I steered the segue right down the middle of it.

  Despite her speed and skill, I was able to keep her in sight the whole time.

  “Give it up Karen, there’s no where to run!” I yelled a couple of times.

  She would glance over her shoulder and redouble her effort. I could have almost applauded her attempt, it had to be difficult in the cumbersome suit.