“They’re OK,” Moore replied after a pause.
“And can you confirm whether Mr Harwood, that’s Mr Harwood junior, is there, by any chance?”
“No, he isn’t. Which is a little perplexing, as our surveillance intelligence clearly show us he was here just a short while ago and started a discussion with Ms Tauroa. However, neither party can be located, which is why we moved in from our command post. Having said that, we have just completed a telephone conversation with Mr Harwood and Ms Tauroa, in which he made some idle threats relating to the welfare of the people we have taken into custody.”
“I know, detective. I’ve just gotten off the phone with him myself,” Wisneski interrupted.
“We were unable to get an accurate lock on the location the call was made from,” Moore added apologetically, more embarrassed by their lack of technological capability than anything else. The Americans would probably have found him by now and have him in custody.
“You won’t locate him. My suggestion to you, detective, my suggestion,” Wisneski repeated to emphasis his point, “as clearly I can’t order you to do anything, is to leave the house and return to your command post. You don’t, I repeat, you don’t want under any circumstances to annoy the two Sk- … er the two taller, younger guests of Mr Harwood, in any way.”
“What do I tell my boss? He’s flying in here as we speak.” Moore was all for pulling back from the brink – nothing the American had said to him could prevent him from feeling he was in way over his head. Which Wisneski confirmed next.
“My boss is calling your boss’s boss at this moment. You, Mr Moore, will stay put with a small team to look after the needs of the people you found at the house. At some point I will no doubt be joining you there as a guest of your government. If Mr Harwood returns you will call me immediately and I will speak to him.”
“Understood. So what do I tell the Tauroas? They’re concerned about the whereabouts of their daughter.”
“Why don’t you tell them to call their daughter? The phone seems to working,” Wisneski said as he ended the call.
Moore sat in front of his computer monitor considering his next move. He was probably buggered, whatever happened over the next few days. Outside he could hear one of his team – he was not sure who – arguing with Rangi Tauroa and his wife, the formidable Doris Tauroa. He felt pretty guilty about the way the older couple were being treated. It was just a process they had to endure – there was nothing personal in the routine and they clearly had no idea what was going on. Although, in the greater scheme of things, this did not really matter. In some respects, they were expendable, collateral damage. Abstract terms like that were just that, Moore mused, until you were personally involved in some fashion.
He picked up Tauroa’s mobile and handed it to one of the young constables on his team. He had assembled a team of juniors as part of this operation because what they lacked in knowledge they made up with boundless, wide-eyed enthusiasm, and because they were relatively ignorant of process and procedure. In other words, they would put a lot of energy into the operation and be oblivious to the wider ramifications, and not question the rights and wrongs of the taskforce they had become involved in.
“Give this to Mr Tauroa and tell him to ring his daughter. If he manages to touch base with her, respectfully request he comes and has a chat with me afterwards. Understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
Moore really liked working with rookies. They also tended to be far politer and more obedient than their older peers.
His own phone rang. Moore glanced at the number and after letting it ring a while finally answered. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“This operation is to be dialled down now, Moore!”
Despite the attitude of his boss, Moore was actually pretty impressed by the pull his American caller of just a few moments ago must have had. Something or someone must have shitted on his boss from a great height and at great speed for him to call so quickly. He was not known as Slick in the force for nothing, and his normal modus operandi was to fudge and delay at all costs rather than make a decision about anything.
Moore wandered into the house as he listened to his boss and appraised the oddly assorted group sitting in the lounge watching the Rugby Channel with renewed interest. Moore understood with the benefit of his experienced policeman’s eye and gut instinct that, however it appeared to the contrary, these guys posed no real threat to anyone for the moment. Two of them were focused on the TV and the third appeared to be in a world of her own.
“I understand a recent caller made some suggestions about how to deal with the situation. I suggest you follow those instructions to the letter.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Please use your discretion, Moore; you’re in enough trouble as it is for exceeding your brief.”
Moore grinned to himself. Like hell, he thought. He had followed his written instructions to the letter, but at the end of the day he knew the orders might not assist him in the short term, if some anti-disestablishment, cardigan-wearing, card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe dipshit decided to have a poke at the police over this operation as the victims of the excesses went about their lawful business.
Whichever way he looked at his own position he was an instrument of his manager’s direction but, at the end of the day, Moore knew this wouldn’t help him in court. But it might help him get a job in civvy street when he had to look for a new job. “I understand, sir!”
The call ended and Moore was left wondering how he should proceed next. He suspected his lot was now nothing more than being a glorified babysitter until he was put on gardening leave when the shit hit the fan and a posse of journalists invaded the place looking for answers to questions they made up on the fly. Moore tended to view life through a negative prism and expect the worst.
His train of thought was interrupted by an ashen-faced Rangi Tauroa, entering the kitchen accompanied by his wife.
Eight
Bruce was struggling with the ambiguity of the situation he and Ngaio now found themselves in. They were aboard one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the known universe, tethered to an asteroid that had sprouted a small industrial complex shitting globes of metal like pips.
A space ship packed with highly sophisticated machinery controlled by an AI with a bug and running some kind of self-diagnostic program. Bruce started to let his imagination run away with him, feeling he was marooned as effectively as Robinson Crusoe on his island. He wasn’t worried about starving or running out of air, but neither were they going anywhere in a hurry soon.
Oddly enough, while the ship seemed to be as dead as a doornail in some respects, they could communicate directly with Earth with no discernible time lag, using a humble mobile phone.
Ngaio’s phone rang – her father was on the other end.
“Yes, Dad, I’m OK. No, Dad, I don’t know where I am.”
Ngaio and Bruce had decided they would not let on where they were – it would just complicate the situation. They would try to fob people off with: ‘The police have taken us to an undisclosed location for questioning and will release us shortly. There seems to be a case of mistaken identity,’ kind of tale.
This line did not hold water much longer than it took to dream it up.
“That’s not what they’re telling me here. They’ve asked me if they know where you two are.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Dad. I’m OK, and Bruce is here as well,” Ngaio began changing tack until her father cut her off.
“Bruce Harwood should be in America with his new wife,” Rangi reminded his daughter. He was a bit confused by all the goings-on and had already forgotten that the policeman had told him Bruce was back and, they assumed, with his daughter.
“No, he isn’t, Dad. Here Bruce, say hello.” Ngaio put the mobile into speaker mode and thrust it at Bruce.
“Hi Rangi … Mr Tauroa.” Bruce was still a bit uncomfortable calling Rangi Tauroa by his given
name. Not so long ago Rangi had been a formidable figure in his life and it seemed a little disrespectful to be so familiar now he was an adult.
“What have you done with my daughter?” Rangi demanded, yelling down the line. Normally he had quite a soft spot for Bruce, but if he could have got his hands on him he would have throttled him.
“We’re in a spot of bother with our transport at the moment,” Bruce responded. Which was true.
“I’ve heard that kind of thing before, young man. I’ve even heard it from you before,” Rangi reminded Bruce sternly. “Bring my daughter back home immediately or you will have me to deal with as well as the cops!”
Bruce handed the phone back to Ngaio. There was nothing he could do right then, and nothing he could say would calm the old boy down. God knows what kind of reception he would get when they did get the ship going, or at least got the teleporting thingy working.
Ngaio switched the speaker off and put the phone to her ear. This didn’t make much difference – Bruce could still just about hear every word and it did not take much imagination to work out the rest of the conversation. His name was now mud with the Tauroas, and Ngaio was getting an earful from her father outlining in no uncertain terms, what he would do once he got his hands on him.
Bruce thought for a moment and then had a brainwave. He took the phone off Ngaio and asked Rangi to put Leaf on.
“Who is Leaf?” Rangi snapped. “What sort of parent would give one of their kids a stupid bloody name like that? No wonder she’s a bit odd; it probably scarred her for life.” Rangi was not going to be cut off in mid-flow. He was not used to interruptions when he was on a roll.
“The younger of the women in the lounge,” Bruce said over the top of him.
“Who is Leaf, where is she?” Bruce heard Rangi demanding loudly.
Bruce could just imagine the old codger thrusting the phone in front of Leaf like it was a live grenade that could explode any moment. Technology and Rangi were not a happy combination at the best of times.
“Are you there?” a voice Bruce recognised as Leaf’s asked anxiously. Talking into a device probably seemed to be a crude and primitive form of communication for someone used to messaging connections that reached across the galaxy. He could clearly imagine how she would be looking at the device, wondering what it was used for. It was too small to be a book, the tablet-style appliances many Skidians carried with them.
“Are you there?” she asked again.
“Yes, Leaf, it’s me, Bruce.”
“Where are you, Bruce?”
“I’m on the ship.”
“The ship?”
“Shit!” Bruce cursed himself. The Skidians did not call their ship a ship. “The Mobile Security Platform, the patrol ship.” Shit, this sounds corny, he thought, and he felt embarrassed, even though Ngaio was the only person within earshot. How he felt wouldn’t be of concern to Leaf either, as anything approaching an emotion similar to embarrassment was unknown amongst Skidians. Bruce doubted they even had a word for it.
“I’m on the ship, er Security Platform, and the MPU seems to have some kind of problem. It seems to be rebooting itself or is going through some kind of self-repair process, and I can’t seem to use any of the controls to set a course back to Earth to get home.”
“What do you mean, a reboot?” Leaf asked. It was not a term she was familiar with.
“The MPU has gone to sleep,” Bruce tried to explain with mounting exasperation. Then the mobile went dead.
“What the fuck’s going on now?” Bruce asked as it rang again.
“Sorry,” Moore explained on the other end of the line. “Mr Tauroa’s battery died.”
“OK. Thanks, put Leaf or Myfair back on, will you?”
“Here he is.”
Bruce was not sure which of the two Skidians he should be talking to, but at least Myfair had more exposure to human technology than Leaf.
“The MPU has gone into some form of hibernation or diagnostic mode and won’t respond to any of the normal inputs,” Bruce explained in more detail. “How do I wake it up so I can come home?”
“A subroutine will look after all basic functions on the patrol ship and you are in no immediate danger,” Myfair explained.
I know that, you fucken idiot! Bruce thought. He did not want to put Myfair off as he was actually quite impressed. This could be the start of the most lucid explanation any Skidian had ever provided him about any subject, he thought.
“The MPU should reboot very quickly. If I was in direct contact, I could initiate an emergency recovery procedure. I could probably talk you through the process if you like.”
Bruce was not so sure. It was very rare any of them had anything to do with anything remotely connected to technology, except believing they commanded it, and no Skidian he had ever come across had ever appeared to know how anything worked.
“It’s not very complicated,” Myfair continued. “There is always a backup system on the missions that the subroutine accompanies us on, in case the main one gets corrupted.”
This was something new – he had assumed the MPU was involved in all the assignments Myfair and his fellow pilots took. Clearly this was not the case, and at some point the likes of Myfair had to exercise some form of autonomy. This also meant maybe not all Skidians necessarily had direct neural interface with the MPU either. Curious. He had guessed all the patrol ships, their crews and all Skidians were connected to the MPU in the same way he was. Clearly not, and maybe Myfair and Leaf weren’t either.
“The subroutine is backed up continuously so the emergency reboot is an almost exact copy of the rebooting version. You would not be able to tell the difference until the initial unit regains control.”
It all sounded a bit complicated to Bruce. “Where is it? Physically I mean.”
“The parent, the main unit, is back on Skid. We’re connected via microscopic wormholes so each time we are motionless there is an update, a two-way transfer of data. When we are on patrol we will dock periodically with data hubs placed along our patrol routes, to transfer data. There is one in orbit around this planet, which is one of the reasons why there are regular visitors to this region of space. The MPU should update almost immediately.”
Bloody hell, Bruce thought. Is that possible? “So how do I start the reboot process and get us out of here?”
“It’s quite simple really,” Myfair replied.
Then Bruce started to smell a rat. Why was Myfair suddenly so keen to reboot the MPU? Did full reboot mean he might be able to get control of the ship again and make himself scarce? Bruce rather thought so. If there was one thing Bruce was not about to let happen if he could avoid it, it was losing what little control he had over the patrol ship, and the MPU, while there was a large asteroid bearing down on planet Earth, and the United States Government was after him. The MPU had maintained that the asteroid would pass harmlessly past Earth. Given his past experiences with Skidian technology, Bruce just wanted to make sure he had the ability to do something about it if the MPU’s calculations were a bit off. This seemed even more important now some other entity, or even a part of the MPU it was not aware of, had built the industrial complex on the asteroid.
“OK, do you want to talk me through it then?”
“On the left-hand side of the bridge console is a set of three keys arranged in a triangle pattern. Pressing all three keys in unison will reboot the MPU and the subroutine. Depending on how far the subroutine is through the reboot will determine which version boots up.”
“OK, I’ll give it a go.” Bruce decided it was a risk worth taking. Even if Myfair regained some form of access to or control over the MPU, Bruce thought he could exert some control over him. At least until the asteroid threat was past. Then he might have to put himself at Myfair’s mercy and go back to Skid with him. As he bent over to place his hands on the keys he conjured up visions of spending the rest of his days in a bright orange set of overalls at Guantanamo Bay with a bunch of crazy terrorists, if thing
s didn’t go his way.
As he placed his fingers on the keys, the cabin lights dimmed for a fraction of a second, and the icons at the bottom of his field of vision started to flash and blink.
That won’t be necessary, Bruce. I’m back with you now.
“Well that’s a bit of a relief,” Bruce replied. “OK, Myfair, looks like we are back in business. See you soon.” Bruce ended the call and stood in the middle of the cabin with his hands on his hips and glared up at the ceiling in order to confront the MPU. “What’s going on?”
I’m not sure, replied the MPU, which took Bruce a little by surprise. The MPU sounded like a bewildered child. I didn’t program this construction on the asteroid, nor did my core self. We do not know who did, or what they hope to achieve. However, I can report the asteroid is still on course to enter a stable orbit around your planet as planned.
“So what are those little globes being shitted out the back end of the asteroid then?”
It appears someone or something has set up a pretty standard asteroid mining operation for some reason. The globes contain minerals which would be of immense interest to metal industries on your planet. There must be a smelter in a cavern that is being excavated because the globes consist of refined alloys.
“Bloody hell! Why are they doing that?”
I’m not sure, Bruce, replied the MPU, then changing tack, shall we get you back home to Earth? Your new companion is starting to look a bit agitated.
Bruce looked over his shoulder at Ngaio. He was still holding his pose in the middle of the cabin area and self-consciously relaxed. “We can go home now, unless there’s anything else you would like to see while we’re here?” Bruce said, half-jokingly.
“No, thank you, Bruce Harwood. You have provided me with more than enough excitement for one day.”
The Lifeboat Page 25