by Rolf Nelson
“I’d hate to think what would happen if they tried that with Harbin’s niece,” Helton adds.
Lag nods, “Quite.” Bipasha and Allonia exchange a knowing, disgusted glance.
“How much bribery did you account for in the contract, Helton?” Kaushik asks.
“Never been here. None at all, I’m afraid.”
Lag winces only half-jokingly. “Ouch. Well then, be careful. They can be some very friendly folks when there is no business at stake, or if you get introduced by the right person, but they always put family and tribe first in business dealings. Finding out who you’ll be dealing with and what sort of skeletons they have in various closets would be time well spent.”
“Lovely. Just lovely. Guess we’ll get on that as soon as we know who we’re after.”
Twilight at the Dangerous Materials Storage area. It sits on a dry, rocky plain, nothing more than a set of numbered buildings with variously sized landing pads, arranged in a wide rectangle with roads to and away from and between them. Tajemnica glides carefully down next to Building 6 and settles smoothly on the landing pad, her stern toward the building’s main door. The warehouse is surprisingly busy inside, with numerous people, several sizes of forklift, and many large pallet-loads of metal and plastic crates.
Tajemnica’s cargo bay ramp lowers, and the inside sliding doors are already fully open. Helton, Lag, Harbin, and Kaushik are silhouetted against the brightly lit interior of the bay. All four are heavily armed, and the three Plataeans are wearing armor. When the main ramp hits ground, the bottom angle ramp flips out to get clear to the surface, and the Warehouse Master (male, immaculately dressed but sleazy-looking, swarthy, greasy, bad teeth, soft-looking, overweight but not obese) trudges up to greet them.
“Welcome to Emirate! So delighted to see you have come to remove this headache for us!”
Helton steps forward. “Glad to see you are ready, a lot to do. Surprised it’s down here, not in orbit. Loading would be much easier there.”
The Warehouse Master shrugs nonchalantly. “I don’t ask questions, I just put things where they tell me. Shall we get started now? Your contract did stipulate machine loading, did it not?” Lag and Harbin exchange glances. The Warehouse Master looks around the interior of the ship and affects concern. “Will it all fit in here? And this looks like an old ship. Is it rated to haul this much mass?”
“I think it will,” Helton answers, “if we pack it tight and standard packaging is used. We ran the loading calcs on the run in and it should be fine if we follow the load plan. Mass ratings are okay, too.”
“I don’t know. We were not expecting to be loading on a ship like this.” The Warehouse Master frowns. “Well, let’s see how the first pallet loads. What would you like first?”
“The 120mm canister rounds.”
The Warehouse Master taps away on his tablet, then turns and waves to a Filipino-looking driver on a forklift. He scoops up a pallet and trundles over. When the forklift reaches the bottom of the ramp it becomes obvious to everyone that the ramp angle is too steep for it to drive over. They all turn to look into the warehouse; all of the material-moving equipment is similar, just different sizes. Helton gets an “oh, shit” expression.
The Warehouse Master turns to them, outwardly obsequious, but with a devious glint in his eye. “Oh, I’m very sorry. It looks like we will have to move it by hand. That might take a while. My humblest apologies, but handling that much material might be rather expensive.”
“Can an empty forklift get up the ramp?” Helton asks.
“We can see,” the Warehouse Master replies. He motions to the forklift driver. “Drop the pallet there and just see if you can get on board.” The forklift driver sets the pallet down, raises the forks, and drives up the ramp carefully, then spins easily around with plenty of room. “I guess we will only have to hand-carry it up the ramp. Again, deepest apologies that this will take so long.”
The side hatches above the ramp area open and a pair of the multi-joint mechanical arms unfolds, now with simple forklift attachments. One reaches down, delicately scoops up the pallet, and with a slight whine of high-speed hydraulics, gracefully hoists it up and deposits it neatly next to the waiting forklift at the top of the ramp. Then the arm lowers the forks back down to a waiting position. A flash of annoyance crosses the Warehouse Master’s face before he plasters on a false smile. “Oh, very good, most convenient! That will help.”
“May be quirky,” Helton says to Lag in a quiet aside, “but damn if the AI doesn’t know when shit’s gotta happen.” Raising his voice, he says to the Warehouse Master, “So, if we can get three more forklifts up here the rest can start lining up the pallets in stack order, and we can move this along.”
“That many at once will not be safe. Only one aboard at a time would be better.”
“Are you saying your drivers are incompetent?”
“Oh, they are the best!” the Warehouse Master says indignantly.
“Then we have enough room here for four.”
The Warehouse Master looks indecisive for a moment, then stabs viciously at his tablet. Three more forklifts head for the ramp, each carrying a heavily loaded pallet. When they get close to the ramp, the Warehouse Master vigorously signals them to stop. “Take it BACK!”
The lead driver points to the screen that flips down from the roll cage on his forklift. “It says this one goes next.”
“Well I didn’t call for it!”
A handheld scanner with a screen on the back drops down next to Helton on a coiled cable. He looks up, a little surprised, then grabs it and aims it at the pallet. He glances over at a bulkhead-mounted screen, then at the scanner readout. “Yup, that’s next.” He waves to the forklift driver to drop his load and drive up the ramp. Lag, Harbin, Kaushik stand aside, and the drivers start up the ramp. At the top they spin around, receive pallets on their forks, and head back to the stacking points their screens show them. The Warehouse Master fumes and stomps away.
Soon the back wall of the cargo bay is stacked to the rafters with pallets of ammunition. The mechanical arms transfer loads from the line of forklifts on the ground to the two pairs of forklifts running back and forth in the cargo bay. Helton takes a break from watching the progress and walks to a wall-mounted com. “Bipasha, any skeletons yet?”
“Nothing big. Lots of minor sketchy stuff but nothing to make him stop trying to squeeze you. His older brother is an environmental law judge. Cousin is a mayor. Uncle is captain of a light cruiser, the HMS Hussein. Father is a low-level admin on the far side. Two wives, but that’s legal here. Not sure who he pissed off to get posted here.”
“Well, keep me informed of anything new.”
“Will do.”
“How much cash do we have on hand?”
“You are not going to pay him off, are you? I mean, he might get around to asking for more than we have.”
“How much?” Helton repeats.
“… About eighteen thousand.”
“Should be enough. Ask Allonia to count it all out into a bunch of packets of five hundred, and keep looking for dirt or connections. Out.”
Helton walks out to the middle of the cargo bay, watching the forklifts. They work in pairs, carefully and steadily, but not very fast. He waves at the two drivers heading side-by-side for the ramp, signaling them to stop.
“What percentage of his bribes — I mean personal service and paperwork-handling fees — do you get?” The drivers snort.
“Hourly?” Head shakes.
“Salary?” Nods.
“So, fast or slow, your pay is the same?” Nods.
“Tell you what. As soon as he leaves, you start to haul ass. Port versus starboard. The side that gets loaded first gets eight thousand bonus to split, cash. You get it all loaded in the next six hours, with no injuries, and everything in its proper place? An extra four thousand to split — however you want — for both sides. Not done in eight hours, no bonus. You figure out how many people you really need
to get it done and how fast you can move safely. Deal?”
The forklift drivers look at each other, grins spreading on their faces. They pull out their personal com units, and start whispering into them.
The cargo deck, nearly half full, is a beehive of high-speed activity, with six forklifts zipping around and no wasted movement anywhere. The wall-mounted screens display large countdown clocks. Tajemnica’s mechanical arms whiz back and forth, lifting pallets directly off the forklifts on the ground before they stop moving, and placing them the same way on forklifts at the top of the ramp. Clearly, the proper incentive has been applied.
The horizon to the east of the Dangerous Materials Storage facility glows with pre-dawn light, and the loading is nearly done. The cargo bay is stacked with pallets nearly to the top, all the way to the back, but with a narrow gap on one side to allow access to the stairs. It’s full enough that the mechanical arms at the doors can place each pallet directly into the correct stack. The last forklift hands off the last pallet to one of the mechanical arms, and the countdown clocks all stop at 00:31:22 as the pallet is laid in its place. The drivers let out a ragged cheer, and those not already out of their forklifts hop down and gather around Helton, who directs them to line up in two rows, then walks down the line handing out envelopes, hurriedly shaking hands and offering thanks.
Getaway
“Well, that went much more smoothly than I feared it might,” Helton says, as he walks on to the bridge. Lag, Kaushik, Cooper, Allonia, and Bipasha stand at their stations, rapidly finishing the pre-flight checklists.
“Until we hit transition, don’t celebrate too much,” Lag cautions.
Allonia shoots the Colonel an annoyed look. “Must you look at the dark side?”
“I’ve worked here before. It’s never this easy.”
“I’m not sure if I’d call spending twelve thousand in cash easy.” Helton protests.
“To load a hundred million dollars worth of ammo in a place like this, that is absolutely a miraculous best-case scenario. Usually you are looking at more like five to ten percent of the cargo value. Twenty if you piss them off.”
“Twenty? We couldn’t do that!” Allonia exclaims.
Bipasha is more angry than shocked. “You let us come here knowing that, and you didn’t say anything?”
“The price was very good, and we needed the ammo. I was ready to put in a sizable chunk to make the deal go through if required, but no point in offering if it’s not needed. I also wanted to see how you operate in a shark pool like this. Pressure makes diamonds, after all.”
“Gee, that’s nice of you to be so free with my money,” Helton says.
“You did quite well, at the top of expectations. It looks like we don’t have to spend that much cash, so the ammo was a very good deal. Though with no leverage on the warehouse master, I’d say we leave as soon as we can. I’ve concluded nearly all my business. Everything except finding out about a new system interceptor they were supposed to have.” Lag shrugs. “Other contracts filled or filed, though.”
“We’re buttoned up and ready to lift,” Cooper reports. “Let’s hope we don’t blow anything hauling the extra mass. We came down on the Sokolovs, shall we take off on them too?”
“Sure,” Helton answers. “Try them, up to 99% of whatever Stenson says their max is, just to see if they can do it. If it looks like they can’t, then lift on the Harmon drives.”
“Alrighty, here we go.” He works the controls and twist the yoke. The readouts rise slowly through the green up into orange, getting close to the red. On their screens, the curve of the planet slowly changes as they clear atmosphere.
“They are calling us,” Allonia says. “Something about having to return to the facility?”
“Don’t answer,” Helton orders. “On screen.”
The Warehouse Master appears on a side screen, apoplectic, yelling, and angry. “You MUST return to the warehouse IMMEDIATELY! You do NOT have proper clearance to lift! You are in violation of the hazardous material disposal act, and you MUST return this INSTANT to unload until you have the proper forms filled out! You are NOT cleared to LIFT or UNLOAD or DISPOSE of ANY of that Material until proper procedure has been followed! You MUST come back THIS INSTANT!”
Helton motions Allonia to cut the transmission.
“Like I said, way too easy,” Lag says. “He didn’t get dumped there. He got set up for life there.”
“That explains the brother who is an environmental law judge,” Bipasha realizes. “He passes summary orders against ships hauling stuff to or away from the facility. Makes shaking them down easier. The longer a buyer is stuck there, the more they can take. Likely we’re not the first buyer of that ‘amazingly good deal’ on ammo.”
Lag nods. “If we go back, he’ll make us unload by hand, inspect everything, charge us twenty-percent plus and overtime, and impound the ship until he gets his ego soothed that we managed to load and lift before he finished his night’s sleep. Or just take the payoff and keep the ammo. He expected to have a lot more time.”
“If they have a judge’s order,” Bipasha says uncertainly, “even if it’s not really the most legit thing…”
Cooper is more openly skeptical. “We could land, but–”
Kaushik shakes his head firmly. “Once in their hands, we lose all control over our lives until they are done messing with us.”
“No, don’t go back,” Allonia says. “Not if they are going to lock us up.”
“Unanimous enough,” Helton decides. “Seems there is a lot of atmospheric interference with radio signals. Cooper, make a course that’ll clear the system as soon as possible.” He looks at Lag. “Any direction?”
“You’ll want to avoid any of the Emirate navy, especially the cruiser Hussein. It may not get involved in a local squabble, but–”
“That’s the one his uncle is the commander of!” Bipasha exclaims.
“Ah. In that case, I think we can assume it’s one big happy family, and the Hussein will get involved. Last known location was near the outside gas giant. It’s supposed to have the new interceptors I was trying to find out about. I’m sure they’d love to get a chance to push an old freighter around.”
“Let’s hope we don’t find out too much about them the hard way,” Helton says. “Get an exact fix if you can, plot a fast course–”
“With an extra four thousand tons and only two engines, there are no fast courses in this bucket!” Cooper objects.
“Plot the fastest possible course that avoids the cruiser, and any other Emirate Navy ships they might call, and gets us out of the system. Let’s just hope they’re not very efficient at passing orders.”
“Really, Stenson?” Helton says over the intercom. “Now?”
Stenson has the guts of a hunk of hardware spread out on a work cradle in Engineering. “Efficiency was dropping fast. They needed some major adjustments.”
“How soon?” Helton demands.
“All offline for at least a day before I get the first one up, then another few hours or so each for each of the other two.”
“Shit. Well, at least the Sokolovs are moving us. If there is anything anyone can do to help…”
“Coffee, room service, and any spare induction coils you can find that match the specs on the number three coil from the Harmons. I may need your hands if you can be spared in a little while. Oh, and if you plan on running low-profile, you might want to zero out the settings on the transponder.”
“I think we should be named Inigo Montoya, registered in You Killed My Father. Class Prepare to die. Or should I just turn it off completely?”
“Better to just blank it to default zero so it doesn’t broadcast. If they ping us, it tells them NO DATA for all fields. Shortest possible burst back. If it’s totally disabled, then it stands out like a light to any other ship we pass, screaming ‘we are trying to not be identified!’ NO DATA looks more like a malfunction.”
“We could try to be badass, and put in something l
ike mysterious, or if you can read this, we will have to kill you!”
“Do what you like, but my vote is KISS, ordinary factory default.”
“Killjoy.”
“Just busy.”
Kwon and Sar are prepping lunch in the galley when Helton strides in and heads for the range. He pops the top open, reaches in, and pulls out four round, flat disks from flip-up sockets. Kwon and Sar look at Helton like he’s gone nuts. He hefts them; eight inches across, an inch thick, plug in the side. “Stenson needs ‘em in engineering. We’ll get you new ones later.”
The main screen on Tajemnica’s bridge shows a local system diagram, plotting the locations of planets and ships.
The second planetary orbit ring has three planets: Emirate at 1 o’clock, a gas giant at 3 o’clock, and Geminorum at 5 o’clock.
The third ring has a dot labeled Rings at 9 o’clock.
The fourth ring has another trio of planets at 11, 2, and 4 o’clock.
The fifth ring has a planet at 6 o’clock.
The area to the outside of Tajemnica’s green icon shows what looks like a picket line of red Navy ships.
“Crap!” Cooper snarls. “They are scattered all over outside. Anything heading directly out of the system runs right into one of them. We have to cut inside, go out past the ringed planet near where we came in. Anything else…” He shakes his head in frustration.
Helton takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Well, if that’s the only path, then that’s the only path, even if it’s deeper into the well. Do it.”
HMS Hussein
The spacious bridge of the HMS Hussein has a raised command dais with a large comfy chair. More than a dozen stations surround it, with at least a score of personnel, all men, all wearing bright dress uniforms with many decorations. The man sitting in the command seat has a high-peaked cap with lots of gold braid and medals. He is, it would appear, the big cheese wheel in the dairy.