Family Law

by Mackey Chandler

  When the man got back in his truck Earl called the free bus and was delighted they were very close by on another pick-up already. He told his wife and children to toss a change of clothing in a couple bags and be ready to get on the bus in ten minutes. He got in the cupboard and got the tea box out and opened it. There was a roll of mixed bills and a handful of coins hoarded over the years for an emergency. When those guys found no mailbox with Jones on it, he judged it would be an emergency. He'd call John from the bus.

  He'd seen the old busybody across the way peering out the window again. He took his family out the back patio door and walked around the complex on the back lawn, out of her sight. When the bus slowed to turn in their lane he flagged it down and they boarded on the main road.

  * * *

  The DSBP Florida rejoined the reality of our normal universe once again, on the edges of the Paradise system. The destroyer Texarkana had preceded it deeper in-system five minutes ago and the wave front of its all clear message hit them almost as they emerged.

  The Deep Space Cruiser Calgary appeared, with the tiny burst of secondary particles that announced its rude rupture of space and her twin the DSC Key West joined her seconds later, a thousand kilometers on either side of their flagship. The destroyer Acapulco joined them last.

  The Florida hailed the Phoenix to reveal itself and report. The broadcast was encrypted, but the fact it was broadcast instead of tightbeamed showed its nature without knowing the contents. The station asked their identity, likely nervous at so many warships. System chatter had fallen off sharply after so many strange transits. When the Florida finally got around to identifying themselves and asked for a rehash of system traffic from the station, which was a common courtesy, they were told to get it from their lurker. It was the first time anyone had ever treated them with hostility. A sudden increase in shuttle traffic appeared to be a station evacuation effort.

  Admiral Benson could not understand why a small out of the way world would look at a large force of warships appearing unannounced and slowing to identify themselves as intimidating. They had after all done nothing overtly hostile. He saw no need to name his silent escorts, or state any intentions.

  Not long after the wave front from the Phoenix reached him, with news of the previous traffic and advising him they were rejoining the fleet, a very high speed drone left the system on a Fargone heading. It had to be from the Arch of Heaven. He had no curiosity what it was carrying, it simply wasn't his concern. Neither did he hail the Arch. If asked, he would have failed to connect the drone to his presence.

  The Arch meanwhile was sitting at alert, ready to run on any vector that would give them escape, if this force maneuvered to cut them off. The Admiral was smart, brilliant in his own way, but had a serious lack of imagination and little empathy.

  The fleet assembled and jumped to investigate the route the Twelve Palms followed.

  Chapter 43

  Special Agent Hershey called ahead and had the address he was given put under surveillance, while he came quickly from California. His agents quickly saw Lee was not with the Hansons. More agents flooded in to widen the search. Quick and careful work door to door, found a woman across the street from the foster family who was a natural informant. She verified Earl had gone out with Lee three days ago and come back alone. A even larger number of agents had checked the whereabouts of all the negative income people in the area, as they rarely moved around. They were all accounted for. They asked who were friends with the Hansons. People were questioned hoping to find others with who they might be sheltering. Most of them were people with children of similar ages.

  Finally, they worked down to people who were friends of one family member. They found John Williamson and his family were not at home. An examination of the house suggested they had not been home for several days.

  A quick interview of several associates showed John traveled to the city regularly and bought items there that were more expensive locally. He usually went alone however. That break in pattern and the fact he had a girl Lee's age rang all Hersey's alarm bells. When it was revealed his mother lived in Metro Detroit, the Special Agent called for a light plane to rush them south.

  * * *

  The Florida had a secret system for intelligence gathering. Basically it was a large radio telescope. The original idea was it could gather the whisper of even a common telephone on a planet, from the very edge of a stellar system. The trick was not building such a radio telescope, but building it in such a way that it could be carried in a shuttle bay and self deploy in a reasonable amount of time.

  The Big Ear, as the com people called it, could only be lifted from its cradle in zero G and it took twenty minutes to unfold itself by the steady buildup of electrostatic charge. The slightest breath of attitude jets, or the pressure of light deeper within the system would have ripped it to pieces like a hurricane.

  It was also a time machine. Something that could hear the whisper of a walkie talkie light hours away, could hear the full power blast of a ship's radio after it had traveled weeks. The Florida carried two of them.

  The first system they visited seemed an unlikely place to lose a ship. It was a binary system in which each star had rocky inner planets, but the outer systems of each had been swept clear by the alternating tug of the stars. They sped through without slowing.

  The next star had a full family of dead planets the second one a hot hell like Venus. The third a dry dead planet like a large Mars, with a thin atmosphere of noble gasses. But it also had a huge field of asteroids where a gas giant might normally be. There was a mining community and much activity. The miners readily talked to him and listed many transits that didn't talk to them. It seemed unlikely a ship could be taken under their noses and they had no reason not to tell the tale if they had seen such a thing happen. The third system had a huge gas giant, remarkable enough to be named Goliath and two clusters of asteroid materials at the two stable gravitational points around the giant's orbit. Goliath also had a huge swarm of moons and a substantial if not visually spectacular inner ring system. The star was variable, with large random emissions of radio frequencies. Benson had a sense this was the place he wanted and deployed the two devices at staggered distances to intercept traffic from six to eight days ago and eight to ten days.

  The Florida did a circuit of the system at the Goliath orbit level and inspected the asteroid clusters up close and in detail with millimeter radar. They found no human artifact at all before they returned to recover the telescopes and their recordings.

  "Twelve Palms you are ordered to stand to and cease acceleration. The nation of Red Tree is at a state of war with the USNA. You will surrender or be destroyed."

  "Play it again." Admiral Benson listened to it again with no apparent emotion.

  "I believe the large bogie the Phoenix saw transit Paradise is this Retribution and she captured the Twelve Palms intact. The freighter leading her was likely the tender she referred to. Given her size, she has to have capabilities within the range of somewhat less than a cruiser to, in a worst case scenario, near equal to the Florida." He paused thoughtfully and none of his officers seemed disposed to add anything.

  "We do not know where they sent the Twelve Palms. A search for her could require more naval units than the entire USNA has at its disposal. This Retribution is a declared enemy and we know where she went. We will transit intact as a fleet and require the surrender of the Retribution and the location of our destroyer. The destroyer Phoenix will scout ahead at maximum speed, avoid contact and send a drone back to the Paradise system, to advise us of the status they found in the Fargone system before we follow. Captain Edwards, make it all so."

  * * *

  "Special Agent," Mrs. Williamson said, planted like a fireplug in the doorway, "My son is not here and I don't intend to discuss anything else with you. If you have any other questions I am going to lawyer up until hell freezes over. Without a warrant I will grant you to send one person in my home to do a hands off walk
through and see that my son is not here. I'm widowed to a policeman and I know from my husband that ninety-nine percent of you are sons-of-bitches. He certainly was. I know you love to toss a place and bust everything in sight, until it is knee deep in trash. Well not here you don't. I have a car of local cops on the way over," she said. And the phone in her hand testified to that. "Cops who owe my husband, hate Feebies and take care of their own. If you so much as bust a tea cup, I'm going to have cop on cop testimony against you that will make your life hell for years. Do I make myself clear?"

  "He's not here," Hershey decided. "She isn't bluffing and his car isn't here. If we tie ourselves up here just because she pisses us off we're shooting ourselves in the foot. Skip the walk through even. It's a time waster. Thank you ma'am, we have no further questions."

  He turned back to the car as two black and whites pulled up and parked around his vehicles. "Pull away. Flash a badge and ignore them if they try to flag us down. We are going to want to go north on the highway. We should be able to overtake him, but put a lookout at this end of the bridge and a road block at the north end," he ordered. The local cops just watched them go.

  * * *

  The destroyer Twelve Palms, renamed Sharp Claws was in Fargone orbit surrounded by the grid of an orbital repair dock. They were quickly peeling her markings off, even though the Mothers had not yet approved her taking and her shuttle had been transferred to the Retribution. Gordon had to give his personal letter against her repairs, because the Mothers had no interstellar credit to pledge to the work.

  "I do most of my banking through Ceres,"

  "What's the name of your Corporation?"

  "No company," Gordon explained, "just ask regarding the personal accounts of Gordon of Red Tree Clan. They will know who you mean." The look on the man's face, when he checked the local branch of the Bank of Ceres to ascertain Gordon's creditworthiness was amusing.

  When Gordon asked for a performance bond for his work and custody of the vessel the yard had to buy it from three banks to spread the risk. He was fairly certain it added ten percent to the repair cost, but worth every centum.

  The crew of the destroyer was released to Fargone with that government's permission and Gordon pledged their passage home against the Mother's share of the Twelve Palms as they had contracted. The officers he had gotten to know at his mess and they were surprised not to be held hostage against his daughter. "I have the entire North American continent hostage under my hand," he told them. He illustrated with his middle arm not a true hand, placing a paw the size of their dinner plate firmly on the table and gathering the linen in with a slow retraction of his extended claws. He hoped it was an image they'd relate in their debriefing.

  There might not be much of a market for used destroyers even if they had not wanted to keep her, but they were getting very favorable treatment for giving the Fargone defense industry a look at a very new USNA destroyer and her systems.

  The missiles he actually sold two outright to the Fargoers and they came close to covering the repairs by themselves. Part of their instructions was that the repairs had to be done in such a way that the vessel would not be so easily damaged again. That was pushing the tech envelope and he shrugged at their uncertainty and told them. "Well install redundant shielded cable systems, with the terminations shorted and plugged and back up the other parts in stores if there is no tech to harden them better. You can see what failed and duplicate them."

  They were aboard, near ready to run back to Derfhome, when one of the Fargone officials called him. "You have funded for the crew of the Twelve Palms to be repatriated. Is it permissible to use those funds if the person elects to take passage to another world instead of Earth?"

  He was surprised, but thought quickly. If any failed to return it was a loss of valuable experience. And if they had opposing political views they would do Derfhome more good out from under the USNA thumb. "Certainly," he agreed after a pause. "If any wish a more expensive passage we will cover that. And if any want to stay on Fargone that are acceptable to you, then they can have the price of passage as a cash bonus, to help them reestablish here. May one ask how many are inquiring about this?"

  "Sir, we have two officers and a rated able spaceman seeking it."

  "Thank you," Gordon said. "I appreciate your calling it to my attention."

  "Fargone Control, Retribution requests station departure instructions and vector for a standard one G run to jump for Paradise. Survey System 2371."

  "Roger Retribution, holding for construction traffic ten minutes. Loading instructions by station cable. Contact Departure Control on channel three. Be safe out there."

  * * *

  It was difficult not to be observed tailing John Williamson. On the narrow straight farm roads there was no other traffic to hide behind most of the time. Jesus called a chase plane in to watch him from the side and sent one of the vans a mile west to run ahead a bit in parallel. If Blackwater didn't own it they had it on retainer, or their name rented it pretty quickly.

  John's mother called him, so he was now aware he was wanted and sick with worry what to do about it. Continuing to put distance between him and Lapeer seemed like a good idea. He had no great amount of cash himself and was not convinced he wanted to take any from Lee. For one thing that wasn't what he had agreed to do with Earl and that mattered a great deal to him. He couldn't get past thinking of her as a little girl. In his mind he was contracted with Earl.

  "Could we head west and cut back south and go all the way around the lake the long way, so we don't have to go over the bridge?" Lee asked.

  "No, my daddy was a cop. I know how this stuff works. If you get away fast before they organize you stand a chance. The longer you run the more assets they pull in until they have you. You got to get away fast, or go to ground somewhere like an animal going down a hole and stay put until they stop looking for you. I don't know the back roads the other way either. Trouble with the bridge is they will call ahead. That's the one bottleneck they know we have to go through."

  "You told me you like to read spy novels. If we weren't with you and you were a spy how would you get around the bridge?"

  "If I were a spy I could hire a boat or a plane. I wouldn't worry about dumping an old wreck of a car, because it would mean about as much as a pair of socks to me. I wouldn't be out here trying to haul a bunch of cheap groceries to squeak by!"

  "I could pay for your car," she offered. "If you can get a plane or a boat across I can pay for it. Crap, I can buy a plane or a boat and not miss it out of pocket money. I can buy us another car on the other side," she said frustrated.

  "Huh," he grunted. "I could just park the car and walk away, but it's going to get reported and towed. I might park it someplace like the Ferry lot, but when it empties out at night somebody will see it. The local cops will run the plate and figure out what we did."

  "There's a ferry?"

  "Yeah, out to Mackinac Island. It's a fancy expensive resort, but that don't do us any good, it's not a car ferry. In fact there are no cars on the island."

  "How do they get around then? Really tiny island?"

  "No, not that small, they have horse drawn wagons and carriages. People rent bicycles and some do walk. Especially the day tourists that stay by the ferry docks and shop."

  "Horses?" Lee asked, incredulous. He just smiled.

  They drove along a bit in silence. "Lee, the ferry boats visit the island from both sides of the straights," he said, with sudden intensely.

  "So we could go out to the island and then take another ferry to the other side?"

  "Sure could. I just never thought to. It would be obvious though after they found our car."

  "You don't have family in town that would hide the car?"

  "Good idea, but no. I could put it in a shop to be repaired, but you never know if they will take a couple hours to fix something or a couple days. We could find a place and roll it into the water too, but if it didn't go all the way under we'd still be in tro
uble. And we'd have to walk from wherever we did it."

  "Daddy I know exactly how to get rid of the car, but you would likely never get it back."

  Clare hardly ever said boo, so they were surprised. "How Honey?"

  "Just park it in front of some of the nicer shops in Mackinaw City. Leave the keys in the ignition and a couple hundred bucks gas money in the glove compartment or over the visor. I bet it is gone and somebody will have it hidden for us in a half hour."

  "Clare darling, you are brilliant. That's our plan."

  "Thank you Daddy. I'm needing the bathroom pretty soon if we could stop," she added.

  "Next main road over to an interchange," he promised.

  * * *

  The Retribution started a run for jump back the way they had come in. Home was three systems back the way they had been to the system with Goliath and two different jump paths to Derfhome. No reason to follow the same pattern if there was an alternative route.

  About a third of the way into their run a burst of radiation ahead marked an emergence. "Fargone Control this is the USNA Deep Space Destroyer Phoenix inbound for Fargone orbit. May we have a traffic plot for the previous forty-eight hours please?" They were about six light minutes ahead. They had jumped aggressively deep into the system.

  "Plot to follow. Traffic advisory. You are head on with traffic for jump. Running parallel with separation, but anything under twenty thousand kilometers requires notification." Examine recent plot for details," Fargone Control instructed them. The wave front passed them and gave them a more accurate fix on the Phoenix. How were they going to react when the plot showed them head on to the Retribution and set for a close pass? Did they know them by name?

  "Battle stations," Gordon called on all ship intercom. "Missile crews at controls in four minutes. I don't care if you are in your skivvies with ketchup on your chin. Move it. We are doing business here and got hospitality in an armed ship. Nobody asked us to stand off, or put our weapons under seal. Let's not ruin it by shooting first. If there was a lurker in the Paradise system maybe we were never named to them. Straight station plot doesn't show our cross section or length, but it would say we are Derf. Think that will be enough to make him shoot?"