Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  Theroux smiled coldly. “You just happened to be in one of the more deserted areas at one of the quieter times when there just happened to be a murder.”

  “It’s called a coincidence,” Larwood said. “That’s how I came to be in a position to report it to you people. It’s called an act of folly.”

  “Not at all, we’re very grateful for your help, Mr. Larwood,” Nathan said, and smiled his warmest smile. “Tell me, did you touch the body at all?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Not to see if he was dead?”

  “Well, yes, I did that.”

  “So, you did touch the body.” Theroux made it sound as though they had just proved the case against him. “Did you take anything?”

  It struck Nathan that Theroux was enjoying the role of hard cop a little too much. If he let it get personal then this wasn’t going to work.

  “Like what?” Larwood demanded.

  “The pockets were empty,” Theroux challenged. “You tell us.”

  “I gave up robbing the dead when I took up journalism.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  Time to call a halt, Nathan thought, we’re not going to get at what he knows like this. “Right, Mr. Larwood. Drink your coffee and tell me what you think of it, and you can go.”

  Larwood looked surprised. “That’s it?” he asked.

  “Thank you for your patience,” Nathan said, catching Theroux’s eye and adding pointedly, “If we think of anything else, we know where to find you.”

  “Don’t leave town?” Larwood said grinning.

  “You can’t, I’m afraid,” Nathan said. “Out here, there’s nowhere much to go to.”

  “There is no record of the shuttle pilot’s arrival on Moonbase,” Box confirmed.

  “Thank you, Box,” Nathan said, “that’s all I wanted.” Lately, the name had not been infallible as a command override, and he found himself waiting to see if Box would leave it at that.

  “They’re smuggling drugs out, I guess they could be smuggling people in,” Theroux said. “Ever get the feeling things are out of control?”

  Nathan stared round the empty main office. “They’d better not be.” It only took a minor crisis to leave them drastically undermanned. He wasn’t sure that he should be leaving under the circumstances. Only Devis had any real experience of coppering. “When I leave for Mars, I don’t expect to see this place fall apart.”

  “No chance of that.” Theroux grinned. “We don’t have a real-time link between here and there. And, hell, we don’t have enough people to make falling apart work effectively anyhow.”

  “Push Central Registry for an ID on the dead man,” Nathan said. “I’m going to find out about the shuttle jockey.”

  “You sound like you think there might be a connection.”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “I can see two straight off,” Theroux said. “They were both in the wrong place at the wrong time; and they’re both dead.”

  Nathan shook his head. “Those are coincidences, not connections.”

  The woman was in her forties, and tired. The cubicle she occupied was walled with gibbering screens. Her eyes darted unceasingly between the images of freight being loaded, cargo manifests updating, lift and orbit schedules adjusting. Restlessly, her hands flicked across the control board in front of her, transferring screen inputs to the interactive main monitor so that she could scrutinize them more closely and issue orders directly over her throat-mic or via the keyboard. Watching her work, Nathan assumed that the problems were too haphazard for decisions to be handled by anything but a top-of-the-line machine. People were cheaper. “I don’t know where she came from,” the woman said irritably. “I’m just the operations manager. How the hell would I know where she came from?” She had been studying pictures of a cargo pod which the loading crew were having trouble lining up. Now she said, “Bump freight seven to twenty-one hundred.”

  “It’s gonna knock on,” a voice said over the speaker.

  “It’s already knocked on,” she snapped. “Don’t waste my time arguing about it, just fucking do it!”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “She was flying one of your modified shuttles,” Nathan said.

  “She was qualified,” the woman said. “There aren’t too many of them around, you know.”

  “There’s one less now,” Nathan commented sharply, hoping to get her full attention.

  But she was already onto her next crisis. “Would you look at that?” she muttered, and punched a loading schedule up on her monitor. “Blake?” she demanded – and when there was no reply, almost yelled, “Blake! Where is bloody Blake when I need him?” Switching channels she bellowed, “Svenson?”

  “Yah?”

  “That Martian stuff on three-four should be loading now. Who transferred the work order? Never mind, just get them back on it, do you read me?”

  “Yah, yah!”

  “We’re maximizing Mars traffic, and they’re wasting time on Earth freight. You know what a window of opportunity is?”

  It was a second or two before Nathan realized she was talking to him again. “I know Mars is closer at the moment,” he said. “I’m going there myself soon.”

  “Go now,” she said. “Please? Chaos is coming.” She gestured at the screens.

  Nathan said, “The planetary conjunction can’t have taken you by surprise, surely.”

  “People take me by surprise,” she said. “Look at this.” She transferred a scrolling list onto her main screen. It was a steady stream of requests for the priority clearance of chartered Earth-Moon and inter-station shuttles. “Bloody press are driving me crazy. Some stupid rumour about little green men, and suddenly I’m up to my arse in morons.” She punched up Request Denied and left it to repeat down the list.

  “The dead pilot,” Nathan said. “Where did you get her?”

  “Why are you wasting what little time and sanity I’ve got left asking stupid questions about some unlucky shuttle jockey?”

  “Because it looks like she was some unlucky drugs runner as well,” Nathan said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her hand away from the board. “And you might have a lot less time left than you think.”

  She stared into his face. “Drugs runner? What drugs? What are you talking about?”

  “Where did you get her?” Nathan repeated, keeping his expression cold, his voice flat and hard.

  “She was just a freelance looking to pick up some extra cash. There would be nothing out of the ordinary about it.”

  “Except that there’s no record of her arrival on Moonbase,” Nathan said, and watched for the telltale eye movement, the evasive glance down or away.

  “Isn’t there?” she said, her puzzled gaze unflinching.

  “You didn’t check.” Nathan made it both statement and accusation.

  “Why should I? It’s not my job.” She tugged her wrist from his grasp. “She was here. She was a registered pilot. She was in temporary guest quarters.” She turned her attention back to her screens. “What more did I need to know?”

  Nathan stood on the threshold of what the Moonbase International Commissariat’s Bureau de Concierge called a ‘twin berth guest cabin’. What this meant was that the accommodation people didn’t have the budget to provide sleep cells for transients. Small rooms, each with two bunks and a couple of storage lockers, were provided instead. This one had been completely ransacked.

  As far as Nathan could see, the job had been done thoroughly but probably not professionally. Linings and pockets had been ripped from clothing when it would have been quicker and less obvious simply to feel for whatever they were looking for. Which was small and deliberately hidden, or at least that’s what the searcher must have thought. Nathan picked his way carefully across th
e room. Personal odds-and-ends had been broken and thrown around; another waste of time and energy. It was definitely something particular and small, and chances were they hadn’t found it, which might explain the violence.

  It was when he saw the book-pad that he realized he had missed a move somewhere. He picked it up and flipped through it. Pages had been torn out, but the autograph was still there: To Jane, who is anything but plain, best wishes for your future success, from your friend Daniel Larwood. So, the dead pilot was the autograph-hunter. If he’d taken the trouble to look at the ID he would have recognized her sooner, of course. She had been sharing with someone. Some of the stuff clearly belonged to him. There didn’t seem to be as much of it, but what there was had been trashed as thoroughly as hers. That could be to cover himself. He had disappeared, but then if he was part of the drugs ring, he would.

  He considered running a full forensic, but as he stared round, he knew it would be a waste of time and resources. His old regional crime computer would have ruled it out and he would have protested. Only now there was nobody to protest to. And besides, the bloody thing would have been right.

  Dr. Jiang Li Ho was in his element. He should have been shuttle-lagged after the journey, but he was having too much fun. He liked press conferences, and the bigger they were, the more he liked them. This one was huge, and he was enjoying it hugely.

  “Dr? Dr. Ho? ”

  “Dr? Sir? ”

  “Sir? Dr? Dr. Ho?”

  The clamour was incessant and insistent, remotes buzzed about, lights glowed.

  “Yes?” Ho pointed at one of the reporters. “Yes, your question?”

  “Why have you given orders that the Earth’s media are to be denied access to Moonbase?”

  “Yeah, what’s that all about?”

  “It’s unconstitutional, you realize?”

  “Undemocratic, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Is it because you’re still a red, sir?”

  “Is this orders from Peking, sir?”

  “Or Hong Kong?”

  “Is it Hong Kong, sir?”

  “Sir?”

  “One at a time, please, ladies and gentlemen.” Ho held up his hands for quiet. “I have given no such order. Indeed, I am not in a position to give such an order.”

  “Whose order is it then, sir?” the same reporter pressed.

  “Is it coming from the top?”

  “Are you saying you’re not in charge out there?”

  “Why are we being kept out?”

  “There has been no such order, no such order that I am aware of, and you are not being kept out.”

  “You mean when you go back to the Moon we can all go with you, is that what you’re saying?!” someone at the back shouted above the hubbub.

  Ho beamed. “Much as I enjoy your company gentlemen, and ladies – especially ladies – I regret we have no facilities to accommodate –”

  “That’s a crock-”

  “-how come some people are-”

  “-yeah, that’s right-”

  “-would you care to comment on the fact that Global and Worldwide have been chosen to represent us all?” someone else demanded.

  “Global News already had a reporter on Moonbase, and it is my understanding that the other reporter has been chosen by lot.”

  “Yeah, and we all know what it’s a lot of,” Kenzy commented as she sat alone in the main office, and watched the news conference on one of the big screens.

  “Even if a full media turnout might be difficult don’t you think a limit of two is a bit extreme?” a voice from the scuffling goatfuck of reporters demanded.

  “The bastards have carved it up between them,” Kenzy muttered.

  “The line must be drawn somewhere,” Ho said, smiling regretfully in big close-up, “however unwelcome I for one may find it.”

  “Bullshit,” Kenzy snorted. “Tell ’em what you got out of the deal, Wangly.”

  Coming into the office, Nathan said, “I don’t want to hear you calling him that, okay?” He was about to add keep doing it and eventually it’ll be said to the wrong person in the wrong place and be misunderstood but Kenzy wasn’t putting up a fight.

  “Okay,” she was saying, “I still don’t understand why you trust him, though.”

  Nathan was finding this newly reasonable Kenzy disconcerting. He couldn’t quite believe that she was eager enough for the promotion to behave so blatantly out of character. “Did David get that ID?” he asked.

  “It’s on your recall.”

  From the screen, a voice focused out of the hubbub and asked, “When does the Martian actually arrive on Moonbase, Dr. Ho?”

  Nathan and Kenzy both turned to the screen for Ho’s reply.

  “As I understand it, the freighter will be out of contact for some time yet.” Ho beamed again. “I think we can be sure that your two colleagues will not allow its arrival to go unheralded. You must excuse me now, ladies and gentleman.” He began to leave the makeshift podium, but the reporters were not finished with him.

  “Sir?”

  “Sir, Dr. Ho, Sir?”

  “What’s the Martian like?”

  Smiling benignly, Ho pushed his way through the mêlée.

  “Is it a little green man, sir?”

  “Does he know?” Kenzy asked.

  “Nobody’s confided in me,” Nathan said, and found that although he knew it was irrational, he did rather resent being kept in ignorance.

  “Why are they playing it so cagey?”

  “Why’s usually the key,” Nathan said irritably.

  Kenzy turned off the screen and went to the properties locker to retrieve the statuette that had been found in the Mars shipment. “It occurred to me,” she said, “that you might not know what this is. Do you?”

  “Contraband on its way to Mars. Another why.”

  She looked pleased. “You don’t know what it is, do you?”

  “You obviously do, so tell me.”

  She ran a hand over the sculpture. It was almost a caress. “There’s some collector in the Martian colony doesn’t want to pay punitive freight rates for something that’s already cost him an arm and a leg. If it’s genuine.” She stroked it again. “I’d say it was genuine,” she went on, “but I’m not an authority on the pre-Columbian. My guess is, it’s Mayan – which would make it maybe two thousand years old.”

  Nathan couldn’t help smiling. Kenzy was full of surprises – most of them interesting, as it turned out. “You’re an art expert?” he asked.

  She said, “It was my first specialty before I switched to engineering.” And then, misinterpreting his smile, she added angrily, “Don’t let it throw you. The course was mostly given over to creative spitting and spray-can for colour-blind beginners.”

  Kitson opened the packing-case and pulled out the carton. “I thought Colin and your two-I-C were handling this,” he said. “What, are you short of crimes, sir?” He was speaking to Nathan, but he grinned at Kenzy.

  “Short of manpower,” Nathan said amiably.

  “Well, this is the one.” Kitson lifted the lid and gestured at the neat rows of seismic test charge cartridges. “I found it underneath this layer.”

  “Anything to distinguish this carton from all the others?” Nathan asked.

  Kitson grinned again at Kenzy, and said, “Apart from the serial number, you mean?”

  Apart from the serial number, Nathan thought, yes, it’s definitely time I moved on or back or some damn thing to wake myself up. “So long as they know which one they’re coming to, and I know which one to watch,” he said and began shifting cartridges, making a space for the statuette.

  Kenzy had not responded to the customs man’s tentative overtures and now – as much to avoid his eye as anyth
ing – she picked up one of the cartridges and examined its priming mechanism saying, “It’s fairly expensive bait, you realize.”

  “Christ!” Kitson exclaimed, trying to snatch the charge away from her. “Don’t do that!”

  “It’s quite safe,” Kenzy said.

  “It’s fucking explosive, you silly bitch!”

  Kenzy twisted the primer wheel, and when the indicator was flashing tossed the cartridge back into the box. “Only when it’s primed,” she said.

  Kitson grabbed it out of the box and tried to reset it. “What is the matter with you?” he demanded.

  “She’s very touchy,” Nathan said.

  “I’m not touchy,” she said. “I just don’t like to be laughed at and I don’t like to be called names.”

  “Oh death before dishonour, abso-fucking-lutely,” Kitson raged, still fiddling desperately with the priming wheel. “Dear God almighty.”

  Kenzy took the cartridge from him and neutralized it. “I’m an engineer,” she said, “and, as it happens, I do know what I’m doing. This thing can’t be set off, except with a microwave trigger, which has to be specially tuned.”

  “I know that and you know that,” Kitson said. “Does it know that?”

  “The triggers will be stored separately. Do you want me to dig one out and show you?” she offered.

  “I don’t need a lecture, thanks all the same. Have you finished, sir?”

  “All set,” Nathan said, and put the carton back in the packing-case.

  “Right then.” Kitson was all bustling efficiency. “I’ll notify your office of any change to the loading schedule, shall I?”

  “I appreciate it, Bod,” Nathan said.

  Kitson renewed the customs seals on the freight cage. “No problem. We’re all on the same side, aren’t we?”