Colonyside

by Michael Mammay

  “You caught me at a good time.” She gestured to a chair.

  “I’ve been lucky like that today.”

  “Not all day, I heard. A bit of a rough trip this morning . . . no?”

  I took my seat to buy some time to think. Why did she know that? “You heard?”

  “I make it a point to hear.” She took the chair directly across from me. “Everything that happens outside the dome has an impact on my bottom line.”

  “Where’s your source?”

  “Come on, Carl. I’m not giving you that. But there’s more than one. It’s not like I’m getting classified information. It was a scheduled mission.”

  I needed to find my balance, needed to put her on the defensive instead of me. “Your lawyers are continuing to stonewall me and cause delays. I thought you were going to talk to them.”

  “I haven’t heard from Mr. Zentas. He’s been out of communication.”

  “Seems like it’s been long enough where someone could find him,” I said.

  “I expect to hear from him soon.”

  Since that was a dead end but she seemed willing to talk, I changed directions. “Why do you employ xenobiologists?”

  She chuckled. “I wish I didn’t. They cost too much and don’t add anything to the bottom line. But the rules are the rules. If we want to develop this planet, we have to work around the existing wildlife. That means we need to understand it. So, either we study it ourselves, or we’re stuck with the somewhat whimsical nature of public science. Their timelines don’t really work for me.”

  “Plus, you want your own results.”

  “I’d prefer to say we want a balance to the opinions that might be slanted against development.”

  “Sure. Two sides of the same coin.” I didn’t buy her rationale, but I understood it, and I didn’t want to shut her down. At least I had her reacting to my questions instead of the other way around. “Do you know an employee named Schultz? Or Ortega?”

  “The names don’t ring a bell. But if you tell me they work here, I believe you. We’ve got a lot of employees I don’t know personally.”

  “They were on the mission the day that Xyla Redstone and her team disappeared. I’ve talked to most of the people involved, but those two aren’t here anymore.”

  She turned her palms up. “What do you want me to say? People leave all the time.”

  “I feel like these two might know something.”

  “Just a feeling?” she asked. “Sounds like you don’t have much if you’re grasping at this.”

  “Let me put it this way,” I said. “If this was something other than a straightforward disappearance—”

  “It wasn’t,” said Stroud, cutting me off. It struck me how adamant she seemed about that.

  “Humor me,” I said.

  Stroud relaxed a bit and sank back into her chair. “Sure.”

  “If there was foul play, who on Eccasis has the strongest motive?”

  “EPV,” Stroud answered immediately.

  “Right. What if somebody—Schultz for example—worked for both them and you?”

  Now she stopped to think. “You think EPV had an agent working for Caliber?”

  “You think they don’t?” I asked.

  She considered it some more. “Sure, I guess they probably do. But it doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters if Schultz was one of them.”

  She shook her head. “It really doesn’t.”

  I paused. I didn’t understand her attitude. “It’s in Caliber’s best interest to help me get to the bottom of this.”

  “And that’s where we disagree. It’s in our best interest for you to sign off on the report that’s already there so we can get back to work. This whole thing has set us back, and I have to answer for it. Soon. Corporate has already dispatched a VIP to come observe.” Her expression said she wasn’t excited about that prospect. I didn’t blame her. Nobody wants her boss looking over her shoulder.

  “If I could talk to Schultz, it might help me wrap it up faster.” She wouldn’t buy that. Shit, I didn’t even buy it. But it was the best lead I had into what really happened on that mission.

  She thought about it for a few seconds. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks. And you might want to avoid sending anyone to sector 376R. I’m pretty sure there’s a pissed-off pack of hominiverts that see it as their territory.”

  “I’ll take a look at it,” she said. “But we don’t usually avoid sectors. Our scientists are more focused on moving the wildlife to places where they have less impact on us.”

  “Bring bigger guns then.”

  “Oh, we would if we were allowed. We most definitely would. I’d arm my teams with laser cannons and rocket launchers if I could get away with it. Alas . . . rules. You know the fine for killing a large mammal?”

  “I didn’t know there was one. I guess I’ll find out after this morning.”

  “I’m sure you’re okay,” she said. “The military doesn’t have the same penalties as we do. You probably fall under their regulations.”

  I fake-smiled. “I hope so.”

  “Anything else? I do have that VIP to prepare for. Busy busy.”

  Something she said stuck with me—the idea of moving animals out of a location—but I didn’t know why. I wanted to follow up, but I couldn’t think of a smart question immediately. As I worked through it, her assistant popped his head through the door.

  “Ms. Stroud, you have a call. It’s about the VIP.”

  Stroud looked at me. “I’ve got to take this.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I really appreciate your time.”

  Mac met me right outside the building. “Sir, you’ve got to see this.”

  “What’s up?” A group of about fifteen people stood across the street, chanting and waving signs.

  “It’s that same group who protested against you when you went to the governor’s. At least a lot of them.”

  “Are they here for us?” It seemed suspicious that they’d be here right after I met with Farric.

  “No, sir. As far as I can tell they’re protesting Caliber. But that’s not the good part.”

  “There’s a good part?”

  “Yes, sir. A few minutes ago, there was a group of about five or six counterprotestors. They had a sign that said ‘Humans First’ and they were yelling at this group. I thought it might turn violent.” The smile on Mac’s face said he wouldn’t have been at all opposed to that.

  “But they’re gone.”

  “For now. Unless I miss my guess, they went to get more of their friends, and they’ll be back.”

  “You think we should call the authorities?” I asked.

  “We could. Or, we could stand here out of the way and watch a bunch of nerds fight.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think we want to get caught in the middle.”

  Mac patted his rifle. “Something tells me they’ll give us a wide berth. Anyway, it’s too late.” Mac pointed down the street where about an equal number of people to the protest group had appeared. “Here they come.”

  “Let’s get pictures of everyone on both sides.” I took out my device. “Maybe Ganos can run them through a search and figure out who they are.”

  Mac took his device out as well. “Roger that, sir. I’ll get video.”

  “You just want a fight video you can post on the net,” I said.

  “You caught me, sir. What can I say?”

  Voyeurism aside, we couldn’t do much about it. None of my authority extended to breaking up public disturbances. I wanted to visit the governor, but I felt safer knowing I could retreat into the safety of the Caliber building if necessary.

  A huge light-skinned guy led the new arrivals—maybe two meters tall and weighing a couple hundred kilograms. He was carrying a short metal telescoping baton. A couple others had weapons as well, but no firearms and no knives, as far as I could see. The protestors didn’t seem to be armed, but several of them had signs on woode
n poles, and those looked pretty solid. The new group headed straight for the protest fanned out behind their leader like migrating geese. It started with shouting, then pushing. Then someone swung a sign and suddenly everyone was in it, men and women, throwing punches, kicking, cursing. A man screamed. I feared for anyone who fell. They might be kicked or trampled, even by their own people.

  A siren rang out, but from a long way away. I considered firing Mac’s rifle into the air to break things up but remembered the dome. I didn’t know what high velocity bullets might do to it. It was probably safe, but without knowing for sure, I couldn’t risk it. Someone stumbled from the crowd—from which side, I don’t know—and started across the street toward us, blood streaming from his nose down over his lips and chin. Mac stepped in front of me, rifle held professionally across his chest, and shook his head. The man seemed to take his meaning, because he changed direction and headed away down the street.

  A minute later a military vehicle arrived, stopping thirty or so meters away. Six armed security guards dismounted, formed up, and headed for the melee. People ran in every direction other than toward the soldiers. One woman couldn’t run, limping instead, and one man lay on the ground, apparently unconscious or unable to get up. Two guards ran to him, one going down on a knee to evaluate the casualty while the other five took up defensive positions.

  “Wait here,” I told Mac, and I started across the street. I didn’t want Mac with me since he was armed, and I didn’t want a soldier who might be on edge already to get the wrong idea. I called out to the leader before I got within ten paces, my hands visible at my sides so they could see I wasn’t a threat. “Sergeant, we saw the whole thing, if you need information for your report.”

  The sergeant in charge looked at me before turning her gaze back to her watch. “Thanks, sir, but we’ve got it on camera. That’s what triggered us to show up in the first place.”

  “This happen a lot?”

  “More often than it should.”

  “Any idea why?” I checked her nametag: Benevidez.

  “These folks just don’t like each other.”

  “What’s the penalty?”

  “For those we catch, like this guy?” She gestured to the unconscious man. “Usually a fine the first time. Second offense can be expulsion from the colony, assuming the governor is in a mood to sign the paperwork. Usually they get slapped on the wrist and sent back out into the population.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Everyone knows someone, sir. It’s all politics.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “I think it’s above my pay grade, sir.”

  It was. “Sounds frustrating.”

  “Not really. They aren’t dangerous to us, just to each other. So it’s no big deal. Can we get a quick statement from you, sir? Get your info in case we need it for some reason?”

  “Of course.” I gave my card to a freckled corporal who looked like he was too young to be serving, collected Mac, and headed out the way that the soldiers had arrived. None of the combatants had run that way, so there was less risk we’d run into them.

  Mac seemed disappointed.

  Fader and Ganos were both waiting for me when I got back to my apartment. I guess it was a good sign that they were tolerating each other. After I filled them in about my recent meetings and the fight we saw, Fader even glanced at Ganos before she briefed me. Ganos gestured for her to speak first. I cut in before she got the chance.

  “How was your X-ray?”

  “Negative, sir. Just a bruise. A little news from the governor’s office though, beyond what you already know about the prisoner transfer. First, the governor is upset about what happened to us today out on the mission. A couple staffers say he’s considering closing all exploratory traffic until the military can confirm that it’s safe. Those same staffers say that will never happen, because Caliber and some of the other companies will put too much pressure on him if he does.”

  “What do you think will happen?” I asked.

  “Bets seem to be that he’ll either back off and leave things as they are or cancel all but mission-critical traffic for a day or two, as a gesture.”

  “Any chance that he’d ask Oxendine for her opinion?” I thought I knew the answer, but Fader had been closer to it.

  “I think that’s unlikely, sir.”

  “Me too.”

  “Okay. What else do you have?”

  “There was a lot of talk about a VIP showing up in the next day or two.”

  “I heard that too, over at Caliber. I thought it was company internal, but if the governor is interested, it might be something different.”

  “Or the Caliber person has political ties.”

  I stifled a laugh. My being here was proof that Caliber executives had political ties. “Let’s see if we can find out who it is. When something comes up in two places on the same day, it makes me wonder.”

  “Roger, sir,” said Fader.

  “Any info come in from the military regarding the potential cause of the comms malfunction?” I asked.

  “I got a message, sir. You’re copied on it too. The short version: They found nothing in the hardware. The mission recordings don’t show anything either. As far as the systems go—both helmets and vehicle—nothing happened.”

  I went over to the counter and poured myself a whiskey. “Anyone else?”

  Fader and Ganos shook their heads. Mac didn’t respond, but he rarely drank, and if he wanted one, he’d have fixed it himself.

  “I think we have to consider the possibility that the comms outage was an attack,” I said. “If it was, who has the capability?”

  “To white out military comms?” Fader considered it. “I could ask an expert for a better answer, but off the top of my head, there are some commercial solutions. The military system hops frequencies, so you have to jam across a pretty wide spectrum. That means a lot of power, or a close distance, or some combination of the two.”

  “It doesn’t account for the other vehicle systems that went down beyond just the comms, though,” I said. “We lost sensors, too.”

  “True,” said Fader.

  “EMP?” asked Mac.

  “The vehicle is almost certainly shielded,” I said. “Plus, we didn’t lose function in our suits, and the comms came back on line.”

  “How about a hack?” offered Ganos.

  “A hack of what? The vehicle?” I asked.

  “Why not? You said to consider that it might have been an attack. If you were close enough to a power source that was strong enough to jam your comms, it could have attacked the vehicle systems as well. It would be an order of magnitude more sophisticated, but it’s doable.”

  I didn’t understand how that could work, but I believed her. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, but it does help to recognize who is. “Is there any way to tell if it was a hack after the fact?”

  “There should be signs,” said Ganos. “But you’d need access to the systems involved, and you’d have to know what you were looking for. If the hacker was competent, it wouldn’t be obvious unless you were specifically trying to find it.”

  “Does the military here have people who could figure it out?” I asked.

  “Of course,” said Ganos. “But I’d bet good money that they didn’t bring those people in on it. Not unless a smart leader somewhere got involved and forced it, and let’s face it . . . officers never think of that kind of thing. No offense. People think hacking, they think computers. The thing is, everything is a computer.”

  “So, I need to get you access to the vehicle.”

  “Yes, sir. Or at least get them to agree to look at it and get me access to the people doing the looking. I can make sure they know their stuff. But if they put me on their system to check the vehicle hack . . . that would give me an in to their network. I could maybe get to the bottom of the camera hack from the bombing at the governor’s as well. I’m still dead-ended on that.”

&nb
sp; “I’ll work on getting you access tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mac and I got some pictures of the fight between EPV and Humans First. Can you run them through a search and see what you can find out about the people involved? We might find some kind of connection.”

  “Sure thing. In other news, your boy Farric lit up his comms maybe an hour ago. Just before I came over here. He contacted pretty much everybody.”

  “That would have been right after I talked to him. Any specifics?”

  “He talked some people into a protest. Told them it was important, and that it had to happen right away. I didn’t get it all—I didn’t access his voice comms, just his email. But I got the impression that he was calling people too.”

  “I’m guessing that was the protest we just saw,” I said. “I wonder why he ordered it.”

  “I didn’t find anything on that,” said Ganos. “But there was something else. Not as obvious . . . kind of hidden behind the protest noise.”

  “Let me guess. He was looking for a name.”

  Ganos stared for a second. “The last time you knew what I was going to tell you before I told you, we were in deep shit. Please tell me this is different. Because I’ve got chills, and not in a good way.”

  “I think we’re okay.” I meant it. This was a different situation than when she and I had been hacking a major defense contractor. We’d been doing something totally illegal back then, and we didn’t know the significance of what we found. This time it was only slightly illegal, I had a pretty good idea what Farric was up to, and EPV didn’t have nearly the capability of a company like Omicron. Although I had to watch out on that last one. Somebody had gotten Bergman off the planet. I did have Mac, though, which made it different from last time. He helped balance the scales.