Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  Nathan heaved. The cover wouldn’t budge. He didn’t dare put his shoulder against it for fear of damaging the suit, so he put his gauntlets flat against the leading edge, braced his arms and pushed. Almost imperceptibly, the cover began to roll back. Behind him, he could hear the airlock doors collapsing. It was impossible; this was a vacuum, and there could be no sound in a vacuum, but it made no difference – he could hear the terrifying roar, he could feel the ripping force of the shattering burst. He pushed more frantically.

  The bomb was a delicate glass sphere about the size of a golf ball. On the street, it was known as a nitro globe, and though Devis couldn’t remember the technical name for the colourless liquid inside it, he knew that if it was exposed to oxygen the bang was hot and huge. The young man made a cage of his fingers and bounced the globe around inside it.

  “Christ,” Kenzy said, “they really didn’t scan for glass, did they?”

  Devis moved towards him. “Easy, son,” he said. “You don’t want to kill all these people. What would that achieve? Give that to me now.”

  The arm flexed, as if to throw. “I’m not your son.”

  Devis stopped trying to get near him.

  On the screen in Chandri’s office, the poem ended: And – his – dark – secret – love – Does – thy – life – destroy. And as the last word disappeared, so did every control system in Outpost Nine. Nathan jammed the joystick forward and gunned the MoRo at the gap left by the partially open access hatch.

  “Give it up! Do it, you little fucker! Do it now!” Kenzy yelled aiming the pistol squarely between the hijacker’s eyes. He did not hesitate. His arm arced forward. Kenzy shot him through the forehead. It was too late to stop the action. Already dead, he threw the bomb at her.

  With maximum power to every wheel, the MoRo heaved into the opening. Nathan felt the wrenching impact, a soundless jarring through the unpressurized cabin. He ignored the collision damage lights and kept the drives on full.

  Kenzy saw the nitro globe spinning at her, flashing and glistening like a soap bubble, rising high as it came, high towards the top of the bulkhead. She lost sight of it against the lights.

  The MoRo lurched free and out into the rockscape. Nathan cancelled the safety overrides. Accelerating hard, he plunged it down the side of the crater. He glanced at the rear-view screen. A plume of vapour was venting through the coarse dust and rock covering the outpost. It could only be seconds before everything blew. “Faster, you bastard,” he muttered. “Faster.” It would be over in seconds. He would be dead in seconds. He could do nothing to escape it.

  The globe flew away from Devis, smaller and smaller. He saw Kenzy raise her arm. Was she waving? Death was high beyond her outstretched arm.

  The MoRo lunged and pitched. Faster, you bastard, faster.

  Kenzy couldn’t see it. It was there, but she couldn’t see it. She detached herself, floated upwards arm out. It was there flashing in the light. She reached for it stretching her arm stretching her fingers too fast too far.

  The flash was fierce and gone. Shock wave and debris smashed through the dark.

  Kenzy’s fingers pulled the globe into her hand. She barely resisted the urge to clutch it tightly in her relief and triumph. “Yes!” Devis yelled and passengers began to applaud.

  The MoRo was far enough away and low enough down onto the crater floor to survive the explosion which had destroyed Outpost Nine. Nathan applied the brakes and sat in the gently swaying cab feeling sick and exhilarated. He found he was breathless as though he had just stopped running. He was laughing as he checked the systems for damage.

  “Are you all right?” Devis asked taking the nitro globe carefully – very, very carefully.

  Kenzy was quietly gleeful. “I’m better than all right,” she said. “I’m a bloody hero. When the press get hold of this, you and I are both going to be bloody heroes. Let’s see that mongrel Spring try to fire me then.”

  “Always assuming they let the press get hold of it,” Devis said. “Pacific Spacelines are a pretty rich outfit, if you know what I mean.”

  “Michael Chandri’s younger brother Sajiit, now sole heir to the Chandri fortune, said tonight that his father would have been very proud of the sacrifice that Michael had made.” The picture of Michael Chandri was flatteringly youthful. “Investigations continue into what exactly happened –”

  “Sound off,” Nathan said, and the newscast was silent.

  “How long do you think they can keep it away from the press?” Theroux asked.

  Nathan poured himself another coffee and shrugged. “The man was a mass murderer,” he said. “Difficult to keep that in the family.”

  Theroux frowned. “I’m still not sure I buy the motive.” He smiled. “No offence. I mean it’s pretty damned elaborate wouldn’t you say?”

  “He had the resources to make it work,” Nathan said. “And an abiding horror of falling short of what his father expected of him.”

  “Yeah but he must have set the whole thing up at the first sign of difficulty with that intelligent listening project.”

  “At the first hint of the possibility of failure,” Nathan agreed. He sipped his coffee. For some reason Lee was in his mind. He was thinking that death was infinite. Forever, lonely, terrifying, empty, never again. He felt his heart flop in his chest like a suffocating fish. He took a deep breath. Too much coffee, he thought, have to watch that.

  “No,” Theroux said. “I could accept it maybe if his father was still alive. Old man Chandri’s been dead for how long-?”

  “Five years,” Nathan said. “Death doesn’t stop you trying to please your father. It just makes it a bit more difficult.”

  Theroux grinned, and nodded at the mute but still running newscast. “Hey they’re on again,” he said. “Sound.”

  “We’d had a tip-off about a possible hijack attempt,” Kenzy was saying to one of the scrum of reporters fighting for her attention as she and Devis made their triumphal way through the Temple Bay Spaceport. “Commander Spring was responsible for us being on the flight.”

  “She’s quick,” Theroux said. “You’ve got to allow she’s quick.”

  “Incompetent shuttle security,” said Nathan grimly, “and I’m stuck with a corrupt cop.”

  “The ISPF will be pressing for a general reorganization of shuttle security,” Kenzy went on.

  “You going to reinstate her, then?” Theroux asked.

  “She’s reinstating herself,” Nathan said. “Listen to the bloody woman!”

  “And now that Nathan Spring is running things, the Star Cops can get the job done. Can’t we, Colin?”

  “Oh absolutely, Pal,” said Devis, with a perfectly straight face.

  Trivial Games and Paranoid Pursuits

  It was there. Lauter resisted the urge to say I told you so, but only until they got visual confirmation. “Now what do you think of my drunken journo?” she crowed, as they watched the module tumbling slowly against the blackness.

  Marty still looked unconvinced and unenthusiastic. His round, pale face remained irritatingly expressionless. “I think she was lucky they didn’t deport her,” he said. “I would have done.”

  Lauter smiled and snorted but her violet eyes never left the screen. “You didn’t like her because she fancied me.”

  “I’ve got nothing against the odd muff-muncher,” he said. “But that one was decidedly odd.”

  “Like you would know,” Lauter chortled. “And anyway there wouldn’t have been a scrap hauler left on Moonbase if the alcohol regs had been enforced. Half the Guild were blind that night.”

  “Some of them probably still are,” Marty said. “Rocket fuel tends to do that to your visual cortex.” He punched up a computer simulation of the cylinder’s motion and its dimensions relative to the salvage shuttle’s cargo bay. “Can we sto
p it, do you think?”

  Lauter hadn’t come this far to go back empty. She sighed patiently. “Be serious, dear heart,” she said.

  “Can we stop it safely? That’s what I mean. And get it in the hold? It’s a big bugger.”

  “It’s a standard module.” Lauter was getting impatient. “No bigger than she said it would be. It’ll fit. You know it’ll fit.”

  “Don’t tell me what I know. You know I hate it when you do that,” Marty said.

  Lauter ignored the prompt to further bickering. “Is the trajectory right?”

  Marty already had the confirmation from the navcom. “It’ll drop into the sun eventually.”

  Lauter closed her eyes and sighed. Everything was definitely right. “Everything’s definitely right,” she crooned. This was better than sex. “This is better than sex.”

  “If you say so.”

  “She promised us a jackpot, lover.”

  “A possible jackpot,” Marty said. “Sorry a possh-ible shack-pot.” He burped loudly. “Shhcushe me, doll.”

  “She wasn’t that pissed.”

  “It was meant to be you,” he said, without smiling.

  Lauter reached over and pinched the soft flesh on the inside of his right thigh. “Listen, misery-guts, we’ve got them every which way to Christmas, and you know it.”

  He pulled her hand away. “You’re doing it again.”

  “One.” She held up a finger. “It could be a fuck-up and someone wants it back,” she said, rehearsing again the arguments for the retrieval.

  “Even though it’s not on anyone’s list,” he said, more or less automatically.

  She held up a second finger. “Two. It could be stuffed with goodies.” It was like a litany.

  He said, “Even though it’s not on anyone’s list.” An almost ritual response.

  A third finger. “Three. There’s the scrap value.”

  “Wouldn’t be worth the fuel to haul it back,” he said.

  “And four.” She held up a fourth finger and Marty looked at her in surprise. There shouldn’t have been any more. “Last, but a long way short of least, there’s the hazard to navigation premium.”

  “It’s a long way short of navigation too,” Marty said scornfully. “All those commercial flights into the sun? They’ll pay top whack for getting this thing out of their way, won’t they? Your reasoning is flawless, as ever. How does she do it, I ask myself?”

  “Well we’re not going to tell them precisely where we picked it up,” she said, in the purring voice he claimed irritated him but she knew made him horny. “That would be silly wouldn’t it, Marty dear heart?”

  “And how do you propose we get away with that?”

  “I will lie through my teeth. You will falsify the computer records. It’s called teamwork.”

  “You’re a bad person, Lauter,” he said.

  “And you’re putty in my hands,” she said, this time stroking the inside of his thigh.

  They had stabilized the module quite easily using the strap-on jet packs which Marty had attached on his first EVA. Now, on his second stint outside, he was attempting to manoeuvre it into the cargo bay. Despite the bulk of the thing the procedure should have presented no real problem but for some reason he was having trouble lining up the remote handling arm.

  Lauter was not being much help. “Marty, sweetness? How much longer is it going to take to secure the fucking thing?” she murmured over the suit radio. Marty suspected she thought he was trying to abort this pickup because he was nervous about it. She was always complaining that he was overcautious. Wimpy, she called it. “If you can do it faster,” he grumbled, “get suited-up and get your arse out here.”

  “Such tantrums,” she chided.

  “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this,” he said, straining to see what was snagging the huge cylinder and keeping it out of the holding cradles.

  “Your mother must have told you there’d be women like me.”

  He couldn’t see any reason why it didn’t come straight in. It was just a standard construction module. No sign of any major damage. Access was sealed off and a couple of long-burn directional drives had been bolted onto the equipment lugs. It was odd, but there was nothing obviously sinister about it. “I don’t like this,” he said. “There’s something not good about this, Lauter.”

  “You can be good or you can be rich, Marty my love,” she purred. “You can’t be both.”

  “So it seems.” Only he hadn’t been talking about the ethics of Lauter’s plan. He’d been talking about the feeling he was getting. She’d really have thought he was wimpy if he’d said it out loud. But there was no escaping it. The thing was creeping him out. It was spooky as fuck.

  Odile Goodman waited with growing impatience for the corporate logo to finish playing. The fanfare from Also Sprach Zarathustra accompanied a montage of station graphics, grainy footage of pioneers Armstrong and Aldrin, and a mechanically enhanced old glory waving clumsily in space. It was finally replaced by the perfect receptionist announcing, with just the right mix of pride and eagerness to be of service, “This is the United States Space Station Ronald Reagan. My name is Suzette, how may I help you?”

  Odile sat back down at the house’s main console and said brusquely, “Connect me with Section OMZ 13.”

  The receptionist’s response was immediate. “I’m sorry, but there is no section of that designation.”

  “You sure?” Odile asked – then thought better of the question, and said, “Just connect me with Dr. Goodman.”

  “I’m sorry but there is no Dr. Goodman presently on the station.”

  “Dr. Harvey Goodman.”

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist repeated and smiled encouragingly. “Is there someone else I may contact for you?”

  “Dr. Harvey Goodman,” Odile enunciated slowly and clearly, as though talking to a deaf child, “has been working on the station for more than a year.”

  The receptionist did not take offence at the tone. “I can find no listing for a Dr. Harvey Goodman.”

  “Transfer me to a human being,” Odile instructed.

  “The information I have given you has been checked and rechecked and is correct,” the computer-generated receptionist confirmed politely.

  “I don’t want to argue with a PR graphic. Connect me with a human being,” Odile said. “Now, Suzette. Now. Do it now.” She was pleased to see the receptionist’s smiling face freeze-frame briefly before it faded. It was always satisfying to induce failures, however small, in the smooth running of marketing machines. Another face appeared on the screen. There was no logical reason to assume that this was the human being she had insisted on but Odile was reassured to see that the man looked tired and a touch irritable. A superimposed caption identified him as Pete Lennox, Duty Personnel Controller. “Yes ma’am, how can I help you?” he said without bothering to smile.

  “There’s some sort of computer foul-up,” Odile began.

  “When is there not?” Lennox interrupted wearily. “And your name is?”

  “Goodman. Odile Goodman.”

  “Well, Ms. Goodman, if this involves salary allocation, I am going to have to ask you to be patient with us.”

  Odile said, “I’m trying to contact Dr. Harvey Goodman. Your communications computer doesn’t have a listing.”

  Lennox yawned and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll cross-check it for you.” He yawned again. “Sorry, it’s been a long day. How are you spelling Goodman?”

  Odile spelled the name and Lennox looked away from the screen. When he looked back he said, “Nope.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “No reference to arrival, departure, allocation of resources, nothing.”

  “He has to be there.”

  “D
o you have a section for him?” Lennox asked. “A designated work area?”

  “OMZ 13?”

  “We don’t have any outer modules designated thirteen. On account of it’s an unlucky number.” He thought for a moment and then said, “This Dr. Goodman… would he be, uh… would he be your husband ma’am?”

  “Harvey’s my brother,” Odile said.

  Lennox looked relieved. “I see. Is it possible you’ve got the wrong station, Ms. Goodman?”

  “Anything’s possible, Mr. Lennox,” Odile said. “Thank you for your time.”

  “You’re quite welcome.”

  Odile stared unseeingly as the smiling receptionist came back on the screen. “Thank you for calling Ronald Reagan, the station which works to keep your peace of mind in mind,” it said.

  “Right now, someone, somewhere, is committing a crime,” Kenzy said to no-one in particular as Theroux went through the main office on his way to the Moonbase central complex. He paused to check that his new ID tag was straight on the breast pocket of his dress coveralls. He was pleased with ‘Chief Superintendent David Theroux’. It looked pretty good, if a little long. “Some friend of yours?” he asked.

  “Oh that’s very funny,” Kenzy said. She jabbed at her screen’s hold icon. “My job description reads ‘cop’ not filing clerk.”

  Theroux ignored the complaint. “I’ll be a couple of hours, okay?”

  Kenzy got up from the workstation and went to pour herself some coffee. “You going to ask how come they sent the guy out from Earth instead of nominating one of their base people?”