Empty Casket Conspiracy (Terran Patrol Book 1)

by Lewis Dually

  “I don’t like guys like that. They’re too hard to control. You can’t work the system when they don’t follow the rules. Who’d he fight with on Neptune?”

  click

  “That’s not important. Just be careful.”

  “You want me to get the Beaner on it?”

  click

  “Sure. Why not. Offer him a bar to cap the Commander. Make it look like an accident.”

  “Where can he find the Commander?”

  click

  “He’s in San Francisco right now at the Naval Academy. Tell the Beaner to be careful. Only the Commander is to be hit. His companion is protected. If anything happens to the kid the boss will be pissed.”

  “Ok. I’ll let him know and I’ll post you an update on the boards.”

  I took off my headphones and looked at Clair. “The Beaner’s going to cap me for a bar. That don’t sound good.”

  “No it doesn’t. Any idea who the Beaner is and what’s a bar?”

  “Bar of gold I’m assuming. That’s what lead us here. Gold bars hidden in empty caskets on the Ramses. As far as the Beaner goes I’d say he might be a Mexican or maybe a Bostonian. Other than that I have no idea.”

  “What about this former partner sending you?”

  I sighed and said. “That’s a good question. The only people who could send me to do anything would have to be Navy or PDA. Or the President.” I said as an afterthought.

  “Did you get anything else from all of that?”

  “Yep. Two things. My young traveling companion is protected and that clicking noise each time before the caller spoke. That’s the sound of a microphone being keyed before each transmission. The reason you can’t track the caller is because he’s off planet. He said he had a problem ‘up here’. When pilots and miners talk on a ship or out in the belt they say ‘out here’, when they talk on a space station they say ‘up here’. Whoever the caller was he was on the U E One!”

  “Couldn’t he be on the U E Two, New Horizon or Chang Powell?”

  “No I don’t think so. The Powell would have static in their morning transmissions because their orbit takes them through a solar deflection zone. The New Horizon is a civilian station and all of their communications are digital cellular systems. You would have received a digital ID tag on any call from them. On the U E Two they tend to say over here sense it’s on the far side of the sun. Also they’re so far away that there would be a seven minute lag time in their transmissions. It’s the U E One alright. They’ve been on high alert for two days so all cell calls and private lines are cut off. Only official channels are open which includes diplomatic channels. The last time I spoke with Admiral Albright he was referring to the Croiddan as the Croiddan delegation and giving them diplomatic status which means they have access to off station coms calls that would not be monitored per diplomatic protocols. The caller said the Boss would be pissed if my companion was hurt so I think that narrows it down to four possibilities.”

  “Hold on a second.” Clair interrupted. “Who are The Croiddan? I thought that was a last name, not a group.”

  “Well that’s a good question and one I’m not sure I’m allowed to answer. Let me ask you a question. Are you going with your dad to the new Space Ranger unit?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I don’t really see the need for cops in space. I like to be active and doing something that really matters. How much good could I do in space? It ain’t like there’s a lot of crime out there.”

  “Let me broaden your horizons and tell you what I think is going on here. I think Mr. Hoag was shipping miners to their deaths in exchange for gold. I don’t know that they actually died but they are definitely missing and Hoag received just over thirty six pounds of gold for each one he sent. The Croiddan are the ones paying the gold so I assume they received the missing miners. What they did with them I have no idea. The Krueg are here ready to start a war or an invasion and I think they were brought here by the Croiddan somehow. Keep in mind it’s not the Croiddan per say but a couple of the Croiddan who seem to be bad apples. Actually in light of this recording I just listened to they sound more like gangsters. Most of the things I know and the ways I came about knowing them were things that should have been investigated by cops. Unfortunately there are no cops in space so I had to do it. If you decide to join your dad you will be entering the 21st century’s version of the Wild West. The lawless backwater of the mining colonies. Gambling, prostitution, dope, racketeering and murder. You name it, it’s there. And now we have the added complication of Alien species interacting with us. The Croiddan are an Alien group most people know as the Black. We also have the Krueg who are gathering an invasion fleet and the Shewn whom I recently had a brief encounter with. So you see, you working as a space cop wouldn’t be a waste of time.”

  Clair contemplated for a long moment before she responded.

  “Well sense you put it that way I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t go with him. I never realized there was so much crime in that empty void.”

  Before she could continue, Merle walked in. He had changed into his usual work uniform. Basically he took off his spurs and strapped on a utility belt sporting a Colt model 1941 and a pair of hand cuffs. Nothing else changed and this time I knew his horse was in one of the stables on the north side of the building.

  “You find anything interesting on that recording Commander? It sounded to me like you better step carefully while you’re down here with us prairie dwellers.”

  “Yes I would agree with that summation. I would like to know who the Beaner is. Any ideas?”

  “Well I never heard of any particular individual called the Beaner, just a slang used for some of our friends from south of the border. Let’s see what Mr. Hoag has to say about it. He’s been sweating for about thirty minutes now. Maybe he’s ready to spill the beans on the Beaner.”

  As I followed Merle and Clair to the detention center I began to replay the caller’s conversation in my head. The caller talked as if he had firsthand knowledge of me. As if he knew me or had met me. He knew about Neptune but that was common knowledge on any ship or station in Earth orbit thanks to the communications screw-up the former Lieutenant had made. I was ninety nine point nine percent sure the caller was on the U E One. I was basing that on my grasp of off planet lingo. The caller could have been new to the off planet scene and miss spoke but I didn’t think so. The U E One was on high alert and any personnel with high enough clearance to make an off station coms call would know all those calls were monitored during high alerts for any unauthorized information leaking out. They would also know the diplomatic channels were not monitored and they might be able to make a call on one of them but I didn’t sense that the caller was Navy. You can always tell a Navy man by his speech patterns and this one didn’t have them. For example most people call a cell phone a phone. In the Navy it’s a coms unit. That pretty much narrowed the list down to folks with diplomatic status. There were probably a hundred or so with that status but the only ones who would be interested in my investigation were the Croiddan. The caller also said my companion, and I assume he meant Joydeus, was protected and the boss would be pissed if something happened to him. Antwon seemed to be in charge of his group and Joydeus being his son it would make sense that he was the boss which would mean one of the other four Croiddan was the caller. I hadn’t had much interaction with the other four and was starting to regret that mistake. The big question mark was the former partner. If the caller thought his former partner may have sent me after them then the former partner must be somebody capable of giving me orders and there weren’t too many people who could do that!”

  A Ranger dispatcher flagged us down as we walked past their coms room.

  “Sir. We have a request from a space shuttle to land on our Heliport.”

  Merle stopped dead in his tracks and glanced back at me as he said. “We’re not authorized to receive a space shuttle here. Are they having mechanical issues?”

  “When th
ey first requested clearance I told them as much. Then they declared an emergency and requested clearance again. I don’t think they really are having problems Sir.”

  “What’s their ID number?” I asked.

  “The dispatcher looked at her screen and then said. “UES 178-S2.”

  “That’s shuttle two from the Dawn Rising. One of mine.”

  Merle stepped into the dispatch office and said. “Cancel the emergency and let them land. And when they’re gone erase all data from our records that they were ever here. This is part of a Navy top secret mission and they were never here. Comprende?”

  “Yes Sir. Got it.” The dispatcher said as she slid on her head set and began giving the shuttle clearance.

  “Well let’s go see what this is about Commander.” Merle said.

  “Right behind you.” I responded.

  Standing beside the garage we watched as shuttle two approached from the east and made a perfect glide and sink landing on the helipad. Even at our distance I could see Walters’ red ponytail swish as she exited the pilot seat and disappeared into the shuttle’s interior. Moments later the shuttle door lowered and Walters’ head popped out. She motioned for me to come in and then disappeared back into the shuttle’s interior.

  “Well that’s odd.” I commented. “Let’s go see what’s up.”

  Merle and Clair followed me and we trotted to the shuttle and climbed up the open ramp.

  “Well I’ll be danged! It’s good to see you Dr. Shaw?”

  Shaw was sitting in a wheel chair strapped against the wall and didn’t look to be very well but he was alert and obviously excited to see me.

  “You look like crap.” I said as I stretched out a hand to shake his.

  “Yeah, well that goes double for you. What happened to your face? You run into a wall?”

  “No. I ran into a ship.” I said with a grin. “Let me introduce every one. This is Merle Baca, head hombre of the Texas Rangers, and his daughter, Special Investigator Clair White also of the Rangers. Merle, this is my aide, Lieutenant Walters, and the mangy looking fellow in the wheel chair is Dr. Shaw of the PDA. Don’t worry, he’s on our side.”

  “Pleased to meet ya.” Merle said but I could tell he wasn’t sure about who was on whose side.

  Shaw reached out a hand to Merle as he said. “You’re the Merle Baca who is heading up the Space Rangers next month?”

  “I am.” Merle said has he shook Shaw’s hand.

  “Well then you should have a seat and listen in on this conversation. I’ve been awake for about four hours now and I’m caught up on what’s happening. I wish I’d been awake earlier and I could have told you about the Krueg.”

  “I had a feeling you knew about them. Fill me in.” I said as I took a seat in one of the shuttle’s swivel pilot chairs.

  “The Krueg came here in June of 2037. They sent an advance scout and reconnaissance ship with a crew of ninety four. They made one mistake. They boarded an unmanned cargo transport in route to the Saturn Observation Station. They intended to gain knowledge of Earth technology. What they got was the flu. Bird Flu to be exact. In the two years previous to their arrival the Avian Flu or Bird Flu as most call it, finally made the mutation all us scientist’s feared. Turns out it wasn’t all that bad. In that two year span it swept the globe with a one hundred percent infection rate but only had a mortality rate of one percent. Mostly the very old and those who were already very sick with other illnesses. No worse than any other flu really.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” I interrupted. “I was in bed for eight days with that stuff.”

  “Right. That was the worst part of it. Seven to ten days was the average. Lucky for us the Krueg didn’t have any immunity against that type of virus. They opened the sealed containers on the cargo ship and exposed themselves to it. Seventy two hours later the entire crew was dead. We found the ship and towed it in. We studied the Krueg physiology and figured out what happened to them. Later we cracked their language matrix and deciphered their ship’s communications logs. Basically they declared Earth a black planet. No Krueg were to ever approach our system again. The Krueg had subspace communications at that time but after they informed their command of the virus they incinerated their radio systems to keep it out of our hands. Good news for us, they didn’t incinerate the whole ship. We reverse engineered that ship and developed our GUTM reactors, Magnetic Pulse Drives and finally our Warp technology from it. That was a lucky break.”

  I interrupted Shaw again. “I don’t believe in luck. There’s Devine intervention and human intervention, no luck.”

  “Well whatever you want to call it, it kept the Krueg away until now.”

  Walters spoke up. “That’s what this is all about. The Flu. Of the two hundred and fourteen missing persons in Belt Line’s employ, two hundred and two of them had a natural immunity to the Bird Flu, they never got sick!”

  Clair jumped into the conversation. “But you said the infection rate was one hundred percent?”

  Shaw kind of shrugged his shoulders as he said. “Well technically it was about ninety nine point nine five percent. About one in every two thousand people had a natural immunity and never got sick. One out of every two thousand and Belt Line managed to get two hundred and two of them signed up for work and then they disappeared? Here’s the thing. If you want to make an inoculation for the flu then you have to develop that inoculation from the actual flu virus itself. Basically you give the patient a dead dose of the virus. The patient gets a little sick for a few hours and then it’s over. His body has developed the antibodies to make him immune and the dead dose of the virus is just that, dead. It can’t reproduce. The problem is with this particular virus, even the dead version of the virus produces such an explosive immune reaction in the Krueg that their mortality rate would be ninety percent or better from the immunization itself. The only way the Krueg can be immunized against the Bird Flu is to take the antibodies directly from a living host who has a natural immunity.”

  “Directly from one of the two hundred missing persons is what you’re saying. What’s the ratio here, patients to donors I mean? One to one?” I asked.

  “Not sure. We would have to do a lot of testing to figure out an adequate dosage. A lot more than that though. What you do is take as much blood from the Donor as possible without causing harm to them. Then you separate the antibodies from their blood, dilute it in a glucose solution and inject the patient. That’s a very, very simplified explanation of the process but it gives you the general idea. One donor’s contribution could probably inoculate maybe five hundred or so. If the donor is in good health then you could repeat the process every four weeks.”

  Now Merle got into the conversation. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying two hundred donors could inoculate one hundred thousand of these Krueg every month? That’s one point two million a year. That’s a lot of soldiers but not near enough to mount a planetary sized invasion force. You’re also saying these missing people are probably alive and well. They’re just being held against their will. They’re being treated like dairy cows basically. Keep them fat and healthy and they produce plenty of milk.”

  “Exactly!” Shaw agreed. “They are being milked for their antibodies. The thing I don’t understand is how the Krueg are getting the donors. The Croiddan and the Krueg are mortal enemies. Why would the Croiddan give the donors to the Krueg?”

  “I don’t think the Croiddan are handing the missing persons over to the Krueg.” I said. “That would be like a drug dealer teaching his addicts how to make their own drugs. I’d say the Croiddan are making the vaccine and selling it or trading it to the Krueg. Maybe they worked out a deal to give the Krueg Earth in exchange for something.”

  “Exchange for what?” Merle asked.

  “I don’t know. Safe passage to their new world Trito, release of the other Croiddan, who knows.”

  “Humph.” Merle grunted. “You remember what I said about dumb criminals? Sounds like this Antwon character
has made a deal with the devil. He should study Earth history a bit closer and take a lesson from Hitler. Lots of folks made a deal with that devil and didn’t live to regret it.”

  “Yes.” I agreed. “I’m not so sure about your numbers either. We only know about the two hundred missing miners. The Croiddan have been abducting Humans for a long time according to the PDA. We don’t know how many more they have on their antibody farm.”

  Shaw leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his legs for a second as he said. “The feeling is starting to come back in these things. It feels like little bee stings getting me. You’re right about the numbers. We don’t even know if they have other operations active right now. The only reason we found this one is because you got curious about the empty caskets. They could be doing this same thing in multiple places and multiple countries around the world, and they would have to in order to produce enough antibodies. We’re not just talking about inoculating their invasion force. They would need to inoculate their entire population. They couldn’t risk bringing this virus back to their home world.”

  “I have a question for you.” I said to Shaw. “Wouldn’t the Croiddan need a doctor who specialized in this kind of thing? I mean, this ain’t something your average saw bones could do, right?”

  “Right. It usually involves several science and medical researchers and can take fifteen or more years for all the FDA clearances before it gets released for public use.”

  “OK. But if you wanted to bypass the FDA and do it under the table what kind of medicine would the doctor need to specialize in?”

  “Well let’s see, there’s gene therapy, antigen therapy, infectious disease research and…”

  “Hold on a second. Let me rephrase the question. How could we identify the doctor or doctors helping the Croiddan to develop this particular vaccine?”

  “We would need to look up a list of researchers active in vaccine research through the AMA or the CDC to start.”