A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  “It’s easier to continue with Pennington but Linda is fine,” she granted.

  “Thank you. Linda. I’ll make this short and sweet. You have been abusing the privilege of texting Mo with an unreasonable volume. It came to my attention because I observed he looked ill and stressed. He indicated he might return to Home just to get away from you.”

  Linda started a little and then regarded Mo. If looks could kill, he’d have been sprawled on the floor.

  “I’ll note that he specifically refused to register a complaint. He acknowledged you have common interests such that he didn’t feel you shouldn’t be able to contact him at all. Also, out of his respect for what I now see was a foolish defective judgment on my part. It’s the manner of constantly contacting him that is a problem. Bluntly, you have no sense at all about what is normal and reasonable. I have no stomach for trying to teach that to you. I wondered how you could possibly do a job and write that many text messages a day. I have to hand it to you that your supervisor said you performed your duties adequately.

  “But Mo is not the one complaining, I am. You are interfering with Mo, who is a valuable asset to me. You are of relatively little value to my nation. I told Mo I thought that if he returned to Home you would simply follow him there as you followed him here. That would be a tragic waste for all of us. Therefore, I have decided I am going to expel you from Central. You have a week to decide what of your things you wish to take, whether to store or dispose of the remaining items and leave. You could go to Armstrong or one of the other lunar colonies or back to Home. Once you go out of our lock, you are no longer our concern.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Linda protested. “Unless… you want me out of the picture because you want Mo,” Linda accused.

  Heather forced her mouth to stay shut, and just looked briefly at the pistol laying on her table. It took a moment to compose herself.

  “Congratulations,” Heather said, “you have just managed to make me feel a surge of empathy for every petty tyrant who has ever had an impossible person dragged outside and beheaded rather than deal with them.”

  Linda was too stupid to be afraid, but Mo was alarmed and sickened at his ex’s accusation.

  “I’ll add a bonus. If you can’t afford to leave the Moon, I’ll gladly pay your passage to any of the habs or Earth. It’s worth it to be rid of you. Now, don’t say another word,” Heather said with a forestalling hand. “Don’t make me regret being this generous with you, just go. And Mo, I suggest you block your phone right now.” Heather stood and went to her quarters. If Linda didn’t have the sense to leave quickly Dakota would kick her out.

  * * *

  The new Director of Security at ISSII, Felix Herrman, was having a slow day. That was a good thing in his business. Truth was, nothing critical or difficult had happened since he’d taken over from Jan Hagen. The man had suddenly abandoned his post and absconded to Home with no explanation. That had been a surprise to the political factions seeking to replace him because they expected a bigger fight over the position. Jan had years of experience and had to have a body of embarrassing files with which to threaten almost a generation of politicians. Felix had been groomed for the job in anticipation of Jan’s ouster and kept waiting in a position created to keep him comfortable but available. That he was able to assume the role sooner than expected with little fuss was a gift Felix wouldn’t turn down.

  The first thing Felix did was discharge those people closest to Jan who might retain personal loyalties over organizational duty. His deputy and both IT specialists involved with local security systems and communications, the office secretary, and personal assistant had to go. Felix extended his purge to the chef and two assistants who ran the station cafeteria and food service. That was the only change to which the various national interest sections objected. The man could cook. Felix however had a paranoid dread of any stranger who was allowed to handle his food. He brought in a chef from the National Police academy to replace the other based on his politics more than his skill. It was much harder to pry a good chef loose from another agency than a spy or cracker. The personal importance of this to him could be judged by the fact he was rail thin.

  It was a surprise when all but the second in command of security decided to move on to the Moon or Home rather than return to Earth. ISSII was considered a hardship post and paid accordingly, but they all seemed to regard returning to Earth as the greater hardship. Indeed the secretary had introduced him to a new term, saying she had zero desire to return to the Slum Ball. He’d have fired her for that slur alone.

  Felix had one of his IT men take a leisurely stroll through the hab, reminiscent of an old-fashioned cop doing a foot patrol of his neighborhood. They were dual-purpose positions, the computer guys both being sworn officers. There really wasn’t enough in the way of systems work to keep one administrator busy. He had two of equal authority simply to keep one from having too much control over systems Felix depended on but wasn’t qualified to run. One would be a restraint on the other. He also assumed one or both of them being in a position to see everything happening, reported to people above him without his knowledge. That was just to be expected.

  They both took turns making the rounds on a variable schedule with no effort to maintain twenty-four-hour coverage. Sometimes they even overlapped. Of course, they both had instant communications with his office and carried sensor packs to keep track of the emissions around the entry to various national interest sections. Permanently installed cameras and sensors left in those locations tended to malfunction or disappear entirely if not actively guarded. Locks always leaked a bit each time they cycled, and with the randomness of the patrols, sometimes they passed various nationals leaving or returning from their county’s sections.

  Analysis of the air in the corridor and outgassing from individuals they passed showed every single private section had outgassing from propellants. The Chinese section showed the presence of metabolites from narcotics all out of proportion to any likely therapeutic use, and for several prescription drugs one wouldn’t expect in healthy personnel assigned to a space station. The air around the Russian section showed that someone there smoked. The persistence of it and the fact there was a heavy haze of odor control chemicals indicated it was someone of high enough rank it had to be endured rather than curtailed by the other Russians. It was not just plain cigarettes, but the horrid Turkish sort with clove flavoring.

  The British section had biological traces so uncommon they had to be sent to Earth for analysis. The report said they indicated the presence of a Honey Badger, which made no sense at all. Felix decided they were just messing with him and wrote it off as deliberate disinformation, informed by British humor. The Indians on the other hand ominously had traces above the background level of products from the slow spontaneous fission of U235.

  Felix was about to go get a mediocre but safe lunch. He wasn’t a deliberate stoic, just a paranoid and control freak. However, the com station for the freight docking mast made a direct call to security. There was a big red touch button in the corner of most public screens to facilitate that. The face on the screen was unfamiliar and so earnest and friendly it put him off. People calling security were not normally in a good mood.

  “Hello, we were just dropped off and told to call security and you’d check us in and take care of us.”

  Felix checked the address on the feed again. It was from the freight dock airlock. He checked the screen traffic control fed them. There was no passenger shuttle scheduled. It showed a quick dock for drop off by a Central vessel. That usually meant a package or two in the mast lockers for UPS or Larkin’s Line. At most, they’d wait for a courier to come sign for a very high-value package. Nobody said they had passengers.

  “Hello? I see you reading. Should we just find our own way to a hotel?” the man asked. “If you don’t have any customs procedures, we’ll just wing it. I don’t see a menu to call up a map or any ads for hotels on this terminal like you’d see at an
airport.”

  “No, no, wait please, I’ll have somebody there in just a few minutes to sign you on the station,” Felix said. “You said we. How many are in your party please?”

  “Twenty-six of us. I’m Milton Busby. I’m not in charge or anything. Some of the others were too shy to step forward and call you. They probably thought that would imply they were in charge. I’d just like to get a room and make some calls home once I can tell my people when I’ll arrive back home.”

  Felix was stunned. Twenty-six of them? He looked at the camera diagram and found the corridor camera looking at the lock and security station, bringing it up on another screen. Sure enough, there was a mob of them all watching the fellow who’d called in.

  “I see. Where is home, and where were you coming from Mr. Busby?” Felix asked.

  For the first time, Milton looked at him like he was peculiar.

  “I’m from the UK and most of us are European. We’re all from Mars. Do you mean to say, nobody informed you we were coming?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Hold right there and I’ll have my deputy come sign all of you in. I don’t suppose any of you have passports?”

  “Of course not. You don’t need one to go to Mars. Back when all of us went to Mars it wasn’t a nation.”

  Felix forced himself to smile. “Well, there’s that, isn’t there? We’ll just have to establish your identities.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard,” Milton said. “Most of us are rather well-known scientists and researchers in our fields. It’s quite the shortlist who managed to get to Mars, and no few of us upset at being kicked out.”

  Felix nodded and opened a half screen to the deputy on call. He didn’t share the split with either party but let the audio run.

  “Stern,” Felix addressed him by his online name, “I need you to go to the mast access lock. Open the check-in station and have all of the people there touch the plate and declare an identity. None of them have identification.”

  “How many of them are there?” Stern asked alarmed.

  “Twenty-six.”

  Stern blinked rapidly a few times considering that.

  “Should I rouse out Richard and ask him to back me up?”

  “They seem quite docile. No need to wake him up. Just get up there before they grow restless and start wandering off. I don’t want to be searching the corridors for them.”

  “I’m on it,” Stern said and jumped up so fast he exited with the screen and camera live.

  Felix ended the call for him and called Traffic Control.

  “Commander,” the controller on duty acknowledged with a nod. He looked relaxed and not guilty. He was chewing on the back end of a screen stylus, unawares, a habit Felix found disgusting.

  “Are you familiar with a ship that just docked briefly at the freight mast? I show it on the departure screen as Dionysus’ Chariot.”

  “Yes, they are regulars. They run a lot of high priority packages because it’s a fast ship.”

  “It’s not a passenger shuttle?” Felix demanded.

  “Hardly. I’d be surprised if it carries more than four, unless you stack them in the hold,” he joked.

  “Did you collect any video that would confirm they are the actual vessel they claimed to be?” Felix asked.

  “Sure, I have a camera feed from both sides of the mast. I’ll share it with you.” He leaned forward and did something on the screen with the stylus. A picture of the ship appeared in the corner of Felix’s screen. Even he could tell it wasn’t a passenger shuttle, but it surprised him it was an atmospheric lander.

  “Is it too late to recall their clearance and demand they return to dock?” Felix asked hopefully.

  “They are long gone out of radio range, cleared for translunar space.” The man paused and frowned considering if he should speak freely with his new boss.

  “I would have advised against demanding they hold in any case. The active pilot was April Lewis.”

  “Am I supposed to recognize that name?” Felix asked a bit frosty.

  “Before you came aboard, a previous traffic control team was cycling through the Chinese section’s turn. They tried to restrain another vessel with Miss Lewis from leaving to arrest some of their passengers. The vessel blew the mast, vaporized a Chinese security officer trying to disable them, shot the Control Leader through the viewport, and then blew the hell out of the yard tractor when they tried to ram them. Pissed them off so bad they shot all the radar and radio antennas off the hab with lasers before departing.”

  “Where was station security with all this happening?” Felix asked. “No wonder they replaced Jan Hagan.”

  “Since he’d escorted their passengers to the ship, and given them explicit clearance to depart, Jan was a bit miffed with the Chinese. He flushed an airlock full of them without benefit of p-suits. That was the start of serious controversy with his long tenure,” the controller explained.

  Felix was horrified. “Nobody told me all this when I was recruited.”

  “It’s all available from public sources if you know how to web search deeply enough. The space nuts all know. But of course, the BBC video was yanked the very next day. Once it’s up for more than a few seconds it doesn’t matter. Somebody somewhere will have archived it, and it’s forever.”

  Maybe they didn’t share all that because they wanted me to take the job, Felix thought to himself.

  “Then they did stack them in the hold,” Felix said aloud.

  “Stacked what?” The controller was way past remembering his earlier remark.

  “Their passengers. They just dumped twenty-six undocumented people on us. I have my deputy down there right now taking names and making a list.”

  “Where the heck are we going to put that many people?” the controller asked. “I think the Marriot has six rooms and they usually run half full.”

  “I’m hoping some of them are citizens of active interest sections on-station who will house them,” Felix said. “If not, they are going to end up sleeping on the deck somewhere until I can get a flight to evacuate them. Did they name an active port of departure? Who was the idiot who authorized their departure?”

  “They claimed a Mars departure, but that’s physically impossible. I took it to mean they didn’t want to say.”

  “Did you get a traffic update?” Felix persisted in asking.

  “Yes, but after they had already hailed us to request docking. It’s physically impossible. They would have had to beat the speed of light lag to get here. It has to be a faked sequence of events. Maybe they used a prearranged transmission, timed to give that appearance.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, if Miss Lewis docks here again, I’d like a word with her,” Felix told him.

  * * *

  Irwin Hall wasn’t used to this sort of walk-in business. He’d had some billionaires sitting in that seat across his desk recently, but all of them had arranged their visits well ahead. Several had security teams accompany them. One person, who he suspected was a trillionaire and not a mere billionaire, sent a lead man ahead to examine the facilities and Irwin himself before committing to a visit.

  The fellow sipping tea across from him just walked in unannounced with no security and no appointment. His assistant, Dan Prescott, did a quick search on the man and sent the results to Irwin’s spex. He did a good job of condensing the information so Irwin could read it while the other man spoke, without making it obvious he was doing so.

  Sajit Gupta was Indian and involved with several industries. He had control of a video production company, a garment distributing system that worked with many independent manufacturers, an entire collection of boutique hotels, and minority interests in so many other firms that Dan stopped trying to read the entire list. Like the lady who they suspected was a trillionaire, it would be very difficult to find out what the man was worth. It was probably enough that it fluctuated more each day than Irwin’s personal worth, so it would be difficult to get a snapshot number. The man might not know himself, without
consulting his accountants. It was certainly enough he didn’t have to worry about raising capital to buy anything he wanted.

  Irwin called up screenshots of the construction in progress and started what was pretty much his standard investment pitch. Gupta was polite, but perhaps a little amused, and cut him off.

  “This is all very interesting,” Gupta said. “I’m sure you have an excellent business plan. All the smart money expects a long strong expansion of the off-Earth economy. I think however that you are mistaking the focus of my interest. I have many investments and a few of them are space-based, but what I am looking for is residential property, not an investment. I want to see details of how you plan to assign spaces for business, service, and residential areas. I want to know there will be places to eat and do light shopping and be entertained.”

  “Beta will be very much like Home,” Irwin said. “The design has worked very well and most of the changes will be in improved materials and things that don’t really show to the casual inspection. There will still be the equivalent of a business district on the full g corridor and a cafeteria. Most people don’t have room for elaborate kitchens or if they are like me, they don’t regard cooking as a hobby, they just want to be fed well, with as little fuss as possible. I do expect to see more independent restaurants and clubs than we have on Home. There is a demand for them here that is difficult to meet. You’d have to acquire a very large cubic, and nobody is vacating theirs.”

  “I came up to see for myself without making an appointment with you or anyone else. I’ve been escorted through too many presentations of various projects to want to be managed and shown only what serves other’s interests. I’ve been at the Holiday Inn for the last three days and I’ve visited pretty much every business and the two cafeterias. At home, I’m known too well. It is difficult to visit restaurants and events without unwanted attention. Even favorable attention is intrusive and cloying. It was refreshing to be able to walk down your corridor and nobody knew who I was or paid me any special attention. I’ve pretty quickly given up any idea of living with staff. I might have a single housekeeper but not a chef or an assistant to do the shopping. Of course, I’d have no need for a laundry maid, driver, or gardener.