“Just around,” said John. “You know how it is, sir. People on ships gossip. They pass along rumors.”
Lujo snorted. “I remember. How long is your tour on the Just Emperor?”
“Three months.”
“Think about the offer and give me your decision when you get back. Three months should be enough time for you to make up your mind.”
“I don’t need three months, sir,” said John. “I can give you my answer right now.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do it.”
The Fleet Officer frowned. “Are you sure about this, Epcott?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well,” said Lujo. “It’ll take a little time to make the arrangements, but when you complete your tour aboard the Emperor, we’ll begin.”
Rainsky
5823
Junian Calendar
Administrative Specialist Vog Sefa did not look up at the sound of the elevator doors whispering open. A quick glance at his infoscreen identified the elevator’s passenger as a Second Officer, assigned to the Echo. System agents had already confirmed his appointment with Fleet Officer Ninok, but Vog’s terminal had no specifics. That suggested the matter probably related to something sensitive.
When Vog did raise his head, to greet the visitor, his eyes widened. The man standing before his desk had black hair, shaved close to the skull, and blue eyes. Those eyes regarded Vog with some amusement.
“Are you all right?”
Vog’s fingers flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, sir. You just caught me by surprise.”
“My apologies,” said the alien. He inclined his head. “I’m Second Officer Epcott, here to speak with Fleet Officer Ninok. I have an appointment.”
“Of course,” said Vog, still a bit flustered. “Officer Ninok is running a little behind this morning, so if you’d like to be seated?” He nodded toward a cluster of soft couches. “Can I get you something to drink, Second? Tea, perhaps?”
“A cup of purple tea would be nice,” said the alien.
Vog nodded, his composure restored, and summoned a runner.
* * * * *
John made himself comfortable in Fleet Officer Ninok’s reception room. It was a pleasant enough room, the rounded walls set to a light yellow, the carpet a dark shade of orange.
The furnishings, unfortunately, were adaptive. As John sat on the couch, he felt it shift beneath him, trying to provide him with maximum comfort and support. John didn’t care for adaptive furnishings; it always felt like they were trying to molest him. He tapped the sofa’s arm, opening its control menu, and disabled the adaptive routines. The sofa settled into its default inert state.
John settled back into it and pulled out his PIN. He had just started Uqqex’s latest puzzle-story, The Seventh Witness. If Ninok kept him waiting long enough, he might be able to finish it.
* * * * *
Ovanu Kedez trotted into the reception room, carrying a cup of purple tea. The young woman glanced at Vog, who nodded toward the seating area. Turning, Ovanu saw who was sitting there and nearly dropped the cup. Smiling, she walked over to John Epcott.
“Your tea, sir.”
The Last Human was reading a PIN. He put it aside, accepted the tea with a smile. “Thank you, cadet.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
She would have liked to linger, maybe ask him what he was reading or why he was waiting in Fleet Officer Ninok’s reception room, but that would have been inappropriate. Instead, Ovanu simply smiled, nodded, and trotted back down the corridor to the service area.
None of the other runners were in the small lounge area. Grinning, Ovanu tapped her comm, dictated a quick text-only message and transmitted it over the infonet.
* * * * *
It was raining in Ted Dov, the water falling in thick, gray sheets. The rain was the remnants of a massive storm that had swept down from the polar region. It had been funneled through the Ca-Tu Mountains, before spreading across the Plains of Sihuz. By the time it reached Dupep Province and Ted Dov, the storm had lost some of its bite, but not much.
Fi Mosu could empathize with the storm. Standing in the doorway of his residence, watching the rainfall, he reflected that he too had lost some of his bite. Through no fault of his own, Fi’s career had hit a low point.
In the last few years, a string of high-profile ethics violations had rocked the commercial news industry tainting everyone in it by association. It had been the fault of that cursed lonely trendfollower, Deso Nesomi. She’d been after an interview with a junior Assembly member, and deliberately violated the privacy laws. When her actions had been discovered, Nesomi’s network had been prepared for arbitration, had been ready to grovel and offer restitution, but that had not happened. The assemblyman had avoided arbitration and taken the matter straight to judgment.
This was a shocking move, as arbitration was used to resolve eighty-eight percent of all legal conflicts on Juni. The fact the assemblyman was requesting judgment, meant that he considered the incident a serious crime.
The commercial news agencies, anticipating the ratings boost that only a scandal could provide, covered the affair with zeal. Their enthusiasm diminished considerably when the inquest revealed that Deso Nesomi and Planetary had committed multiple, serious violations of the law. The public outcry was enormous.
After the inquest, the judgment leveled against Nesomi and her associates was like the wrath of the gods. The Planetary News Network had its commercial business charter cancelled. In the space of a heartbeat, one of the primary commercial news agencies on Juni simply ceased to exist. The newsmakers and administrators who had committed the crimes were judged just as harshly. Most were ordered to undergo mandatory social rehabilitation. All of them were declared baseline, which meant they could never work for anyone else ever again.
Fi could still remember the shock on Nesomi’s face, after the judgment had been delivered. She hadn’t expected anything like this. No one had.
After Planetary’s business practices were exposed, there was a popular demand for a formal inquest into the other commercial news agencies. Moving with uncharacteristic speed, the Assembly created a special subcommittee to investigate the matter. Fi’s employer, JIN, escaped the subsequent inquest relatively unharmed. So did most of the other commercial agencies, but there were enough scandals and criminal behavior exposed to turn the public against the entire industry.
Ratings had dived, as the public turned away from the commercial news networks. They embraced the government-funded newsfeeds, public information networks and private newscasters.
Fi had weathered the storm better than most of his colleagues. The stories he pursued had been of midrange interest to the public, and he had followed the privacy laws scrupulously. So even though he avoided being tainted, his newscasts were getting mediocre numbers. He was committing professional suicide.
Standing in his doorway, watching the weakened storm ravage the neighborhood gardens, Fi was considering a change of employer. JIN had been good to him, but if he wanted to further his career and reputation, he would have to leave them. He was debating whether to pursue a post with one of the government newsfeeds or to strike out on his own, as a private newscaster, when his comm chirped.
Fi tapped it. “Hello?”
A synthetic voice replied. “This is an automated alert. The Last Human’s Infonode has received an update with a ninety-five percent positive response rate. Do you wish to review?”
Snorting, Fi turned away from the storm. Why not? “Yes. Transfer the update to my home workstation.”
His comm chimed, acknowledging the order. Fi went to the small workstation he had set up in the daychamber. Its infoscreen was glowing a warm shade of red. One of his housemates, Sonomi, was sitting on the couch, bent over her PIN. She glanced up as Fi walked past her.
“Finally came out of the rain?” she said, grinning.
Fi sat at the workstation and called up the update. Sono
mi joined him, draping herself over his shoulder. She smelt pleasantly of the spicy soap she favored.
“What’s this?” She squinted at the screen.
“Just an old story I never managed to get the network interested in.”
“The Last Human?”
Fi grunted, reached up to stroke the line of her jaw. “Yes.”
“I think I saw a newsfeed about him once, a few years ago.”
“Most likely,” said Fi.
Briefly, he recounted Epcott’s origin and the Zerraxi incident he had been involved in almost a decade earlier.
“And people still care what he does?”
“Xenophiles,” explained Fi. “They’re fascinated by him.”
“Obviously,” said Sonomi. She reached for the infoscreen and accessed the infonode’s logs. “Fi, some of these entries go back years!”
“I told you.”
She scowled and pushed him out of the chair. He watched, amused, as she began to skim the node’s logs.
“This is strange,” she said, after a few moments.
“What?”
“According to this last entry, Epcott is a Second Officer in the Guard.”
“It’s odd that he’s an alien, but . . . .”
Sonomi shook her head. Her fingers flew across the workstation interface. Fi watched her access a string of prepared agents and send them combing through the infonode’s records.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” said Sonomi. “Well, not just that.” She turned away from the screen. “One of my house-fathers was in the Guard for twenty years and he didn’t rise higher than a Seventh Officer. According to this, Epcott hasn’t been in the Guard ten years and he’s already a Second Officer! How is that possible?”
Fi leaned forward, peered at the screen. “You know, Sonomi, that’s a very good question.”
* * * * *
Elo Lis, the head of the Junian Information Network’s Ted Dov bureau, was in her sixth decade. She was a tall, solidly built woman, dark skinned with long, dark blue hair. Her eyepaint was extravagant, a complex snarl of blues and yellows framing her dark eyes.
Fi had worked under Elo for about four years, and had come to trust her judgment. He liked her no-nonsense attitude and direct approach to problem solving. Still, he grew a bit nervous as she listened to his pitch. Elo’s expression could have been carved in stone. Her face giving nothing away. When he had finished, Elo leaned back in her chair.
“No.”
Fi frowned. “Why not? You’ve got to admit that it’s a good story, Elo.”
“I don’t have to admit anything of the kind.”
“Then why not?”
“Because I don’t believe your premise, Fi. Do you honestly believe that Epcott’s promotion is the result of incompetence and corruption within the Guard?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
Elo snorted. “I’m not denying that, but I am denying this. I don’t believe it, Fi. And I don’t think you do either. You think I don’t know you tried to pitch the network on another Epcott story a few years ago?”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“You don’t sound very convincing.”
He scowled. “You have to admit that he’s risen awfully fast through the Guard. Don’t you want to know how he’s done it? Why they’ve promoted him? Aren’t you curious about that, at all?”
“Did you know I served in the Guard, Fi?”
“No.”
“I was a Colony girl. The best way to get off a Colony is by joining the Guard.”
“I had no idea.”
“That’s why most of the Guard is made up of colonials, not homeworlders. I served for six years, joined as an unranked floater and left as a Fifth Technician.”
“So this sort of promotion is normal?”
“I’m saying that there’s a huge turnover in the Guard. People join, serve a year or three, then get out because they get homesick or realize the Guard isn’t for them. If you have the inclination, it’s entirely possible for someone to do what Epcott’s done. Especially if they’re willing to get their hands dirty.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Guard rewards service. You’ve started your research on Epcott?”
Fi looked uneasy. “Well, I thought you’d give the go ahead so....”
Elo rolled her eyes. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“It’s not much,” said Fi. He pulled out his PIN, called up the relevant file. “Just Epcott’s service record since he joined the Guard.”
She held out her hand, and Fi passed her his PIN. Elo skimmed the file, nodded once or twice, and frowned a couple of times.
“Epcott’s a fixer.”
“What’s a fixer?”
“A problem-solver,” said Elo. “An officer recruited by Guard Command and sent into trouble spots to deal with situations where conventional methods don’t work.”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“There’s no reason you would.”
Elo stood, crossed the office to her workstation. She slotted Fi’s PIN into the station and accessed Epcott’s service record. Her fingers slid over her infoscreen, accessing the network’s info archives. The wallscreens of Elo’s office, which had offered a panoramic view of Ted Dov, turned opaque, plunging the room into darkness. A moment later, information began to scroll across the wallscreen, coalescing into multicolored circles.
At the center of each circle, illuminated in blue, was the info Fi had already gathered regarding Epcott’s service with the Guard. Other information was built around it, forming concentric rings. Some of the rings were red, some were yellow. Here and there, some rings were pale gray.
“The blue text is your baseline information,” said Elo. “Epcott’s service record. The red text is information gathered from public sources and verified. The yellow text is information from public sources that can be tentatively verified with a little effort.”
“And the gray?” asked Fi.
“Unverified information from private sources.”
“Rumors from the whispernet?’
“Unverified information from private sources,” corrected Elo, sternly. “And entirely unusable unless it is verified.”
She tapped the nodes on her infoscreen. Fi watched as the walls of Elo’s office were filled with lines of colored info.
“I ran a preliminary comparison search,” said Fi, shaking his head, “and I didn’t get half of this information.”
“Did you search the offworld info archives or just the local?”
Fi felt his fingers flush. “Just the local.”
“Next time, you’ll know better.”
They skimmed the information, glowing against the black walls.
“I’ve never heard of half these places,” said Fi. “Anopu Ne? Tavvigay? Station 24?”
“Well, then, you’d better start doing your research, Fi, if you expect me to broadcast your story.”
Fi blinked. “You said you weren’t interested in the story.”
“I wasn’t interested in the story you pitched,” corrected Elo.
She touched her workstation, clearing the infoscreen. Her wallscreens reverted to their panoramic view of the city.
“No one’s going to be interested in a smear story about the Guard, and, to be honest, we don’t need the trouble a story like that would cause the network. But a story about an alien fixer, working for the Guard? That, my dear Fi, will be ratings gold.”
“You think?” asked Fi.
“I know,” said Elo. “We’ll get the xenos as well as the average person on the street. Offworld matters are trending high, thanks to the Pijuni Question and Ambassador Hezza’s latest gaffe. If we time your story right, we can score major ratings.”
“This story isn’t going to happen overnight,” protested Fi. “I’m going to have to find witnesses and arrange interviews. And I don’t have to tell you what it’s like trying to pry information out of the
Defense Authority. It took me weeks just to get Epcott’s service record! And you saw the info. I bet half the people I’ll need to talk to are either offworld or on a Guard ship in the back of beyond. This is going to take time.”
“You’ll have time,” said Elo. “And the network’s backing. You won’t be working this story alone, Fi.”
He blinked, surprised at her support. “Thanks, Elo, but. . . .”
“No buts. You won’t be working this story alone. I’m giving you access to the stringers and I’m assigning you a partner.”
“A partner? I don’t need a partner.”
She snorted. “When it comes to the Guard, you do. That’s why I’m pairing you with somebody who knows them and the Defense Authority.”
“But. . . .”
“No buts,” snapped Elo. “You work this story my way or you don’t work it at all.”
Fi knew when he was beaten and shrugged. “Fine. Who am I going to be working with?”
“Don’t worry, Fi. You’ll like him. He’ll be able to open a lot of doors for you.”
“Who?”
“His name is Polum Jobela.”
* * * * *
The bar was called The Merry Rhymer, but if there was anything merry about it, Fi couldn’t see it. It squatted between a commercial transport field and one of Ted Dov’s baseline districts. An elongated dome, the exterior of the bar was a riot of purples, yellows and blues. The interior, however, was drab and colorless. Illuminators were set on low, creating pools of wan light, surrounded by darkness. In another setting, that might have been intimate. Here, though, it just felt furtive. The walls resembled gray steel and Fi couldn’t decide if they were set to that particular appearance, or if the owners just hadn’t bothered to switch on the nanotech.
When Fi stepped into the place, there were several patrons seated around the small tables and lining the bar. Most glanced his way, studied him for a moment, and then turned back to their drinks. The bartender, a fat man with dark red hair, sporting blue and orange eyepaint, watched Fi approach with a blank expression.
“Help you?” he said, when Fi reached the bar.
“I’m supposed to meet someone here. A man named Polum Jobela.”
Dawnwind 1: Last Man Standing Page 22