Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  Nathan thought, So what are you going to do, my love? that’s exactly what I think, I get off the hook and you take my place on it, So what are you going to do, my love? and I’m going to enjoy telling you, and watching you squirm So what are you going to do, my love? and he said, “It’s not going to get me anything.” So what are you going to do, my love? “I’m taking the Star Cops job. So I’m not on the hook any more, am I? This is a parting gift. I’ve left all the information for Lincoln. He’s a good man, he won’t be able to resist going after those two. I suggest you make sure your code is on an authorizing order dated now. That way when he busts them, you won’t end up on your own hook.”

  The Commander stared suspiciously at Nathan. “What are you up to?” he asked eventually.

  Nathan said, “We Commanders have got to stick together, don’t you think?” and smiled.

  Neela Shah, the acting Liaison Co-ordinator of the Candidate Selection Board, said, “After your smashing success with the case, whom else could we have chosen?” She shrugged, a small asymmetrical movement of shoulders and head which seemed to Nathan to be the essence of Indian grace and elegance, and smiled. “I must be honest though, there was a small question-mark over your…attitude?”

  Nathan smiled back, and wondered what her perfume would be like. “Only a small one?” he asked.

  “I think my approach to reality as a scientist, would not be unlike yours as a detective. We are both perhaps disinclined to judge except by results. Are you ready to receive the contract now?”

  Nathan hesitated. He could still turn it down. He could still avoid having to tell Lee.

  “Yes,” he said.

  At one side of his workstation, the printer accepted the document and envelope instructions. Glancing at the freshly minted, sealed envelope which dropped into the document tray, he asked, “What have the Russians done about that maintenance technician they arrested? Svetlana Tereshcova.”

  Neela Shah looked away from her screen. “They executed her,” she said. “They’re not admitting it, of course, but that’s what they’ve done.” She looked back into the screen and caught his eye. “They were going to announce it, I think, but now there is nothing to be gained. You rather spoiled their show.”

  “I don’t imagine the Kuwaitis and their American masters were particularly pleased with the PR either,” Nathan said and took the hard copy of his employment contract from the envelope. “It’s strange how all systems seem to work in more or less the same way. They have the same ends; they use the same means; they produce the same victims.”

  “That is the sort of attitude,” remarked the acting Liaison Co-ordinator of the Candidate Selection Board, gently, “which gave rise to my colleagues’ doubts about your temperamental suitability for the job.”

  Nathan signed the contract and had the computer notarize his signature. “Well, it’s too damn late now, isn’t it?” he said.

  Conversations With The Dead

  They were both asleep when they were finally murdered, but that did not make it painless. In a way, it hurt more. It was one last mistake for them to live with; one last mistake in a history of carelessness, which they woke up to only when they were dead.

  Most cargo-jocks took some of the operating short-cuts which Mike and Lara had been taking since they began to fly together, but no-one else took them all at once. Even the laziest and least professional member of the Guild of Pilots and Co-pilots would have regarded that as an unacceptable risk.

  Not that Mike and Lara were particularly lazy or unprofessional. They were simply distracted. And ironically if there had been as the manual specified, ‘an officer in designated watch position’ when everything caught up with them, it probably would have made no difference. As it was though they were tangled around each other in the double frame they had rigged and they were both asleep when the Dædalus, en route to Mars, began a totally unscheduled main-engine burn.

  As the chemical fire drove the inter-orbit freighter into the soundless dark, the low vibration of the blaze resonated in the light-framed metalwork of the ship, and sang through the air of the pressurized sections where the crew lived and worked.

  Lara woke first. She was confused, disoriented and struggling for the where and when of the Earth dreams which follow all long-haul spaceworkers. Then she snapped awake.

  “It can’t be,” she said aloud, knowing that this was still a dream, though not of home, but sharply here and now. She disentangled herself from Mike and looked around the cramped living compartment for some anomaly she could identify as dream. She stared for something to bring on the rush of waking-up relief that grief and fear were imagined; there was no tragedy, love and the world was not lost. Food dispenser, waste disposal, recreation console, ablutions stall, exercise wheel: it was all there, all as it had been, is now and ever shall be, world without end. “What time is it?” she asked Mike, who had not woken. She pulled at one of his long, pale arms and he stirred. “What time is it?” she repeated.

  “It’s your watch,” he muttered. “Can’t be mine again already.”

  “Wake up, Mike!”

  “I’m not doing the log and I’m not making the coffee. I wasn’t properly compensated last time.” He yawned and wrapped his arms back round her. “You owe me, bitch.”

  “Mike?” Her voice was quiet now, as if fearing to wake him in case she herself could not wake. “Wake up?” she asked softly.

  “What is it?”

  “The engines have kicked in.”

  “Can’t have,” he said, sleepily calm, knowing that it could not be true. “It’s four days to the correction point.”

  “Listen.”

  Mike listened.

  It sounded like the engines. It sounded like a major burn. But they didn’t have the fuel for a major burn. Fuel for course correction. Fuel for orbit attainment. Fuel for a small safety margin. But a main engine burn? Oh, Christ, no!

  “Oh, Christ, no!” he shouted at her. “What have you done?”

  “I haven’t done anything! What do you mean, what have I done?”

  They scrambled apart and dived out of the frame.

  “It’s your watch!” he shouted, as they thrust themselves down the tube towards the control and navigation bay.

  “Fuck you!” she shouted back at him.

  “Engines don’t fire themselves,” he accused under his breath, adding more loudly, “Something set them off.”

  “You’re the pilot,” she snapped.

  By the time they reached the bay, the fuel was critical. They keyed the overrides and tried to abort the firing programme. The computer rejected the instruction. The machine’s safety systems would not accept an unplanned interruption to a precisely projected flight pattern. The outcome would be random. A random outcome could not be optimized.

  “Engine cut-off is dead,” Lara chanted.

  “Re-try,” intoned Mike, punching in the code again.

  The engines surged on.

  “Confirm non-function,” Lara chanted.

  In desperation, they tried to cut off the fuel at source.

  “Engage emergency fuel bypass,” Mike said and then hesitated. “It could blow us to hell.”

  “That’s where we’re heading anyway,” Lara said.

  But when Mike tried to punch it in, the computer immediately closed the board.

  Two minutes later, the engines shut down.

  In the half-heard silence, Mike said, “I’m sorry I was such an asshole. What I said. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Lara said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I didn’t mean to have a go at you. I knew it wasn’t your fault.”

  “It’s not important,” said Lara.

  “I was scared.”

  “I think we’re dead, Mike.”

&nb
sp; “It is important,” Mike said. “I thought I’d die better. And if I was going to lose you I’d sooner it hadn’t happened till I’d stopped living.”

  “If you were going to lose me by being an asshole, Mike love, I’d have been gone long enough before this,” Lara said, and keyed the mayday circuit on the communications rig.

  He was walking on the top of a high bridge. The water below him was so far away that he could barely see it. And he knew that at some point he was expected to jump. The bridge was gigantic but incomplete. Just beyond its highest point where the span began to slope downwards again, there was nothing but empty air. And he knew that at some point he was expected to jump. He felt as though the bridge was rising under his feet, getting further and further away from the water all the time, getting more and more precarious. And he knew that at some point he was expected to jump. All around on other parts of the bridge there were people moving purposefully to and fro. Some jumped; no-one seemed afraid.

  He was afraid, though. The huge bridge was beginning to sway. And he knew that at some point, he was expected to jump. As he moved reluctantly towards the swaying end of the unfinished bridge, he realized it was so high now that he could not see the water at all. He stumbled and tried to grab on but he was slipping so he jumped. He jumped and the sinking lurch took his breath away. He gasped a deep gasp. He was falling and tipping back as he went so that his legs were rising and he could no longer look in the direction he was travelling. He was helplessly rushing down, helplessly sucking air. As he hit the water the voice said:

  “…the crew of the stricken vessel, believed to be a man and a woman, have not yet been identified. This is WBC News on the hour. Staying with the High Frontier…”

  and he opened his eyes and stared groggily at a viewing screen which was showing pictures of an Earth orbit station rising with brooding menace above the curve of the planetary horizon.

  “…in Geneva today,” the newscast continued, “all the major space powers have made formal protests at the US refusal to allow inspection of its latest unmanned orbital station. Speculation that it’s military and a treaty violation has been fuelled by the sophistication of the communications screening with which the station appears to have been fitted.”

  “Screen off,” murmured Nathan Spring, newly created commander and boss of the International Space Police Force. The screen went blank and silent. “Did you set that thing going?” he muttered at David Theroux who was floating near the hatchway entrance of the sleeping quarters.

  “Stopped you falling,” said the youthful-looking, black American. “That is what you were doing, right?”

  The sensation was suddenly vivid in the muscles of Nathan’s back and in the pit of his stomach. “Only forever,” he said and began to extricate himself from the sleeping frame. “I thought these bloody papoose-carriers were supposed to help with that.”

  Theroux proffered a squeeze-pack of coffee and said, “Some people get over it.”

  “Some people?” Nathan accepted the coffee gratefully, though he still doubted that drinking it through a straw would ever take the place of self-mutilation as a recreational pursuit. “I wonder if it’s too late to get a refund on my ticket.”

  Without pausing in his efforts to get out of the frame, he took a pull at the coffee and fumbled the pack. It floated away from him and though he quickly retrieved it, Theroux said, “I don’t think you’ll be able to afford to go back Earthside. Unless you get a major hike in the Star Cop budget.”

  “Oh come on,” Nathan protested wearily, “you’re not going to fine me for that one. I was half-asleep. Play fair.”

  “No problem,” Theroux said. “Shit, nothing’s gonna kill you when you’re half-asleep. You can rely on space to play fair.”

  Nathan’s irritation got the better of him. “All right, Inspector, let’s not be a smart arse,” he snapped. “I hate a smart arse first thing in the morning.” Immediately regretting his outburst, as he always did, he added without much change of tone, “Assuming that’s what this is?”

  Theroux nodded. “Close enough. You’ve been asleep for ten hours, give or take.”

  “You can fall a long way in ten hours,” Nathan said.

  “Get a shower,” said Theroux. “I’ll bring some breakfast to the office.”

  Farlane Wibbs was not unattractive physically, but she affected a soft-voiced, fluffy innocence which would have been inappropriate in a woman half her age. Theroux had always found her irritating, especially as he was fairly sure that underneath all the English sweetness she was a blue-steel bitch.

  She was leaning now into the half module office allocated to the ISPF on the European orbit station Charles De Gaulle, and frowning with earnest concern. “It looks like machine failure,” she was saying, “that’s everyone’s best guess. Engine control programme perhaps, or the navigation computer. It’s a Euro-flight, obviously, so we’ll get access to the data as soon as Moonbase gets it. But it’s so horrible, I’m not sure that I want to know really.”

  “Not a question of wanting to know,” said Theroux brusquely.

  “Mike and Lara were such a lovely couple. They’ll be badly missed, won’t they?”

  “I didn’t know them that well,” Theroux said.

  Wibbs’ eyes widened in mild surprise. “I thought everyone knew them,” she said, the sweet tone of voice managing to suggest that Theroux must be some sort of social isolate, a groundsider even.

  “Everyone knew of them, s’not the same thing,” said Theroux, and then could not resist asking: “They were friends of yours, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Tough break.”

  “You’re doing police work full-time now, are you?” Wibbs asked and when Theroux nodded said: “You’ll be wanting all the official frills and furbelows on the case for your new boss, I expect?”

  “Hell, no. Time enough for all that crap if we’re called in for real.”

  “For this relief, much thanks. We’re on doubles and standard alert as it is.”

  “Double shifts?”

  “They still haven’t replaced the Murderous Movie Buff. Oh, I’m sorry.” Wibbs held out a hand towards him, and looked for a moment as though her heart might break. “I forgot. You two were close, weren’t you?” She smiled a warm, sympathetic smile.

  Theroux grinned, he hoped wryly, and said, “Till he pulled the gun, anyway. And the SA – what’s that all about?”

  Wibbs looked a bit put out that Theroux wouldn’t play. She shrugged. “Routine reaction to all the fuss in Geneva. The US un-manned that’s got the Treaty powers all of a tiswas? Typical American arrogance of course, that’s really all it is.”

  Theroux recognized the cue for some more role-playing and to forestall a display of niceness about forgetting that he was an American he said, “Keep us updated, okay?” and keyed a communication screen.

  Wibbs was not ready to be dismissed that easily. “Are you sure your Commander Spring isn’t going to want chapter and verse on Mike and Lara?” she asked. “Only I thought he was supposed to be a by-the-book type of guy.”

  “There’s all kind of books,” Theroux said.

  “Very well. If you say so.” She turned and moved off down the corridor tube, passing Nathan on his way into the office. “If you say he doesn’t need to know, he doesn’t need to know,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Who doesn’t need to know what?” asked Nathan as he heel-and-toed smoothly across the Velcro walking strip and pulled himself down onto the vacant seat fixture.

  Theroux indicated several brightly wrapped food packs clipped to the console. “Breakfast.”

  Nathan said, “I’m not actually very hungry.”

  “Falling’s easier with something in your stomach.”

  “A ritual disembowelling sword comes to mind. Yo
u know the odd thing is that I actually feel worse now than the first time I came out here.”

  “It could be your age.”

  Nathan scowled. “Late-flowering for a spaceman?” He tore the access tab from a pack marked ‘Little Red Hen Scrambled Eggs’, and waited for the contents to heat and expand. “The original pioneers were my age. Older, some of them.”

  “They were explorers. We’re settlers. Settlers are different. They don’t have the romance and excitement to keep them going. They need to be tougher.”

  “They need strong stomachs, certainly,” Nathan said as the egg pack began to extrude a livid yellow paste. He shoved it quickly into the waste disposal. “Who doesn’t need to know what?” he asked again.

  “You. You don’t need the fine print on the latest accident on the Mars run.”

  “Depends how fine it is.”

  “There’s a two man freighter gone rogue. Headed for the dark. Flight crew’s dead.”

  “How did that happen?”

  Theroux said, “Investigations are proceeding. Standard cop-speak for ‘we’re unlikely ever to know’, right?”

  Nathan frowned. “What investigations? Who exactly’s doing these investigations?”

  “The flight crew, obviously.”

  “Obviously. This is the flight crew you said were dead?”

  “Yeah, technically speaking they’re dead, but that’s just a way of –”

  Before he could get any further Nathan interrupted him. “Inspector Theroux, in case it has escaped your notice,” he said without raising his voice, “I am feeling a little below par. That makes me irritable. When I am irritable it ill-behooves subordinates to start playing silly buggers.”

  “They’ve got limited life-support,” said Theroux coldly, “and no fuel left to correct their course. They’ll run out of air before they run out of space. That’s standard crewspeak for ‘they’re dead and everyone knows it, including them’.”