Manifest Destiny

by Allen Ivers

The hazard pay came from the environment, not the inmates. This should be cake spoon-fed by a stripper the wife ordered for a major birthday.

  Sounded like a phenomenal way for Locklear to end whatever marriage he got next. Didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous he’d somehow find a way to fuck this up without even getting hitched.

  A ripple of laughter broke out from the far end of the table. Isen must’ve told a joke.

  Martin Isen was a human tape recorder, and that meant he had memorized about a half dozen entertainers’ routines from his personal records and over the last three months, the group had heard every single one of them come out of his fat mouth about five times each. But that didn’t stop the rotund ass from rewinding the tape for everybody at the slightest provocation.

  Locklear supposed that was better than staring out the window and wondering what vacuum suction sounds like.

  The only person genuinely enjoying the recaps was Romanov, the only other military brat, who was egging Isen on like he wanted an autograph. Little Dmitri Romanov, who was somehow French despite every outward indicator -- the future was here and it was more alarming every day.

  Romanov slurped down his banana slug oatmeal slag while nudging Isen into another recurring test of the team’s anger management skills.

  At least someone was genuinely enjoying the syndication, while the rest were just relishing the mental image of killing them both with whatever they had at hand. Locklear was going to have to instill discipline in them before landfall, or they were all going to be Mars Dickbags within a month.

  Then he heard Isen’s self-gratifying laugh, a sucking sound pulling on air instead of pushing it, like someone was playing a laugh track backwards.

  It sounded like a goat fucking a rock.

  How far could Locklear push a spoon into a human ear? Eh, probably not that far. Leading point is too broad.

  Locklear’s ‘Give a Fuck’ factor was pretty low today.

  Jericho Hathaway rolled his spoon end over end in his slurry, as though contemplating a similar notion in a bizarre moment of synchronicity. The large man had few words, but said more with his eyes and his hands than spoken language ever could. His expressive eyebrows, bushy and widely parted on his broad forehead, conducted a high-wire trapeze act, performing an interpretive dance of the homicidal imaginings behind the dark umber of his eyes.

  Not that Isen noticed anybody but himself. “And this guy,” Isen barely slipped out past his own grating laughter, “This guy -- he wanted to know -- where did all the ham go?”

  A definitive slam -- the wrong kind of punctuation -- echoed in the room, as a thin-wristed hand clapped against the aluminum table. Jazmin Reed leaned forward, like she popped out from behind Jericho’s flexed pectoral, “We know! We know, Martin! We know what the joke is! You’ve told it to us eight fuckin’ times!”

  Oh, good. Someone who flies off the handle at the slightest provocation. That’s what authorities like in a peace officer.

  She’s going to get her nose broken a lot. From the looks of it, she might’ve a few times already, the tip just a tad off-center. Bar brawls will be her speciality. Causing them or responding to them, she would excel at ending them in a rather unprofessional manner.

  Sure enough, however, Isen rolled back in his chair, smart enough to keep his mouth shut as he mentally mocked her behind a tight jaw. His poker face needed some work though, as his brow wrinkled up in a mockery of outrage.

  Romanov nudged his shoulder, more fuel to Isen’s inflated sense of self-worth. That codependence was problematic, and the only healthy solution was to get Romanov on to his own feet.

  Locklear made a mental note to pair them separately and seat them far apart in their offices down in Manifest.

  Feeling good about himself was one thing. But Isen assumed if he was having fun, everyone must be having fun. If they weren’t, that was their problem. Another quality desirable in police work -- projection.

  Romanov, empathic and weak-willed in equal measure, absorbed the emotional states of those around him. If he could harness that technique, he could control it to deescalate situations like the best of them, rather than riding the wave.

  Cally Wright nudged Jazmin’s foot, having watched the exchange with detached calm, no dog in the fight because she wasn’t really listening before.

  Jazmin simmered a bit, as Cally waited for some kind of explanation for the outburst. When none came, they offered mutual shrugs, and resumed slurping on their slurry. So much information passed between them with just physical touch and a look.

  The one person in this team that Locklear looked forward to seeing work, Cally had just defused a situation without even opening her mouth, and she didn’t even have to leverage her relationship with Jazmin, despite that giving her an advantage at managing the backdraft of a human that Jazmin was.

  A prototype of what Romanov could be, Cally had never been overly fond of conflict, and latched onto Jazmin’s firebrand on day three of the journey — in more ways than one. They tried to behave like professionals during office hours, but a sardine can inevitably let everybody know what their kinks were.

  Locklear had the last two months to reconcile what he now knew with who he had to work with planet-side.

  Jared Strauss, on the other hand, thought he could be the meat in that sandwich. He sucked in the stale air of that lull in conversation, and leaned into Jaz’s shoulder.

  She glared back at him she, imagining what his teeth would feel like against her boot. Not as though he’d notice. Strauss was not the most observant, as evidenced by the grainy five o’clock shadow he grew out to don the title of ‘debonair.’ But between the pock marks and patchy beard, he looked like someone lit his face on fire.

  It was an assessment that most of the squad had shared with Strauss at one moment or another. ‘Please shave.’ Some trying to be helpful and informative; others with the express intent of feeding Strauss’ once fruitful dreams back to him as a clump of gray ash.

  Strauss jerked his head towards Jazmin, both suggestive and offering, “Somebody needs to get laid.”

  Jaz responded with a stone look, “I will break my foot off inside you.”

  Strauss eased away, still sporting the wide grin of a creepy man imagining lesbians.

  Locklear almost wondered aloud how this team of misfits ended up under his command on the way to a brand new planet, and then he remembered, nobody wants to go to Mars. That particular romantic dream had long since been beaten out of people when they started asking for new steel welders to replace the dead ones. And they try not to accept people with proclivities for self-harm on three month inter-solar voyages inside a TV dinner tray.

  And so this was what he had to work with. The undesirables, the back-ups, and the risky ventures.

  Locklear sighed, noticing Tom Garner across from him having a similar response. They shared a smirk, before turning back to their food. Garner could eat almost anything, and do so with gusto.

  He was former infantry and a technician at that, making him the closest thing Locklear had to a cohort. The man could sleep standing up, stomach shoe leather, and do it all with a smile on his face. This was likely the cushiest billet the young man ever had, and he accepted the cramped conditions like he had received a full duffel fresh from the vaults of the Treasury Department.

  Level headed, optimistic, with a wry sense of humor, and graciousness to match.

  That was a good cop right there.

  Well, they all had to be. It was Locklear’s job to make sure of it.

  The squeaking of hands whining against steel, as grease monkey Leo slid down the access ladder like it was the most hum-drum of activities. The gravity was simulated and still reasonably light -- Leo had to have gone down three full stories like a kid down a playground slide. And somehow, Leo’s hippie-looking face couldn’t even crack a smile. Granite stone serious, another bad day of many.

  But the look plastered on his face, a certain stiffness to the already starched expressio
n, and an urgency to his movement, betrayed some other bother up his ass.

  Locklear leaned back on his tin bench, “What can we do for ya, Taggart?”

  Leo shook his head out, associating his inner ear with the new gravity, “Your tech boy have a spare signal amplifier?”

  That was already more information than Locklear needed, and he squinted at the civ almost instinctively. ‘Need to Know’ Regs be damned, that was just sloppy. But who was going to care out here? “Locker five,” he said, a bit colder than he meant.

  Not like robot Leo would notice. Leo bounced himself over to the far wall where a rack of personal lockers hung over half-assed hammocks built for space not comfort. Individual sleepers would hover inches over a bottom bunk, meaning the under-sleeper could turn over and effectively toss their neighbor into the air with a broad shoulder -- a thing soldiers of any stripe were notorious for having.

  And Jericho was famous for. It’s why he always got top bunk nowadays.

  Locklear tried to focus on his slime porridge, “What’s the op?”

  Leo grunted out something resembling an acknowledgement, the guttural brush off of someone already caught in the act. Didn’t mean to be gruff, but always comes off that way. Locklear knew it for what it was, but a good officer can always leverage accidental jerkbag behavior to his own ends.

  Leo messed with the trunk lid, discovering in real time that the personal lockers of personal people are, in fact, locked. Now, Locklear mused, we’re just too embarrassed to turn around.

  By now, the entire squad was trying to hide how hard they were watching. Fake conversations about as convincing as two friends asking about the weather in deep fuckin’ space. They wanted to know what was going on just as much as Locklear did.

  “What broke?” Locklear rephrased, being more poignant in his phrasing than before, a small smirk to acknowledge that the whole cabin was listening now.

  But this time, he was asking more than he’d asked before. Leo would either lie or -- again -- answer more than was asked.

  Leo froze for a moment, his mind running faster than his body could keep up with, so his body knotted up. The programming in his brain hiccuping before stammering out a response: “There’s a… an equipment malfunction. Just want to see if it’s my gear that’s off.”

  Locklear nodded along with the bullshit. Not like he’d follow any of the technical lingo anyway, but there was a distinct lack of it in Leo’s forced response, “I think Garner might have the something you need.”

  “Can I borrow it forever?”

  Locklear pricked up a wry grin, curious to see where this would go, “Specialist?”

  Garner slid out of his seat, eyes darting between Leo and his CO. Garner may have been more grunt than a technician, but bright enough to excel at both. As he trudged over to his locker, his full head of hair, growing back in from his old crew-cut, bounced like a shampoo commercial in the light gravity.

  He shouldered past Leo, as much playful as a reminder for Leo to show respect around here. Locklear wasn’t worried. Garner couldn’t hold a grudge longer than ten minutes.

  Locklear gestures to the empty seat in front of him as Garner fiddles with the combination. Leo flicks a pen from his tool belt, settling down at the table. Somewhere, he had grabbed a clipboard with a form -- yanked it right from the ether, or his own pressurized asshole. Without so much as eye contact, let alone idle conversation, Leo started filling out the requisite form.

  The team tried to resume their mealtime festivities, but kept their volume low so they could maintain their voyeur status.

  Locklear shook his head, knowing full well but electing to ask anyway, “What are you doing?”

  “Civilian requisition of military equipment,” Leo rattled off, like he’d prepared the phrase. “Have to keep definitive records, Sergeant.”

  “We resigned our commissions when we left Gateway. Call me Kyle.”

  Leo finally looks up, perplexed by something, “But you just called him by his rank.”

  “Reminds ‘em who’s in charge.”

  Leo clicked his teeth together, choking on the logical conflict there. Locklear bit back a snicker at the poor grease monkey’s attempts to follow deliberately terrible logic. There was almost smoke eking out of his ears as the gears in his head screeched on the inconsistency of Locklear’s behavior.

  It had been three months. He had to pass the time somehow.

  There it was. The look flashing across Leo’s eyes. Lines drawn taut around his lips, and crow’s feet stretching around the eyes. Strain. But aggressive. More like tension. He was fighting himself.

  Locklear had seen that look many times. It was someone biting back on that first thought, and trying to rearrange their reflexes into more tactful approaches. This was the person electing to be diplomatic in the face of authority, despite every other impulse. Locklear had been needling him, but nothing beyond simple annoyances. Given that lack of sincere aggression from Locklear’s end of the table, Leo had to come bearing his own baggage.

  Translation: Leo didn’t like cops.

  Leo dotted the final ‘i’ on his form, sliding it to Locklear for his signature. Locklear scribbled without even looking at it -- he may not have even hit the right spot on the form.

  Didn’t care either. He watched as Leo methodically folded the form for future storage in a file cabinet no one was going to look in ever again.

  Leo pulled himself along, snagging the handrails pitted into the pipe in the central shaft. It was like rock climbing, but go too fast, and an uncontrolled flight headfirst into a bulkhead would follow, accompanied by the concussion and vomiting. He needed to slow down, or he’d be doing that in short order.

  Talking with Locklear always got him fired up. Combination of military and police gave him such arrogance, and a willingness to swing it around. A personality quirk that Leo tried to minimize his exposure to.

  “Leo?” Locklear poked his head out of the compartment a few dozen feet back, like he’d been summoned by Leo’s internal griping.

  Leo grabbed ahold of the railing, stopping his speedy flight. He took a bracing breath, before flipping over, presenting a calm and professional face, “Yeah, Sergeant?”

  “Just Kyle,” Locklear scolded him like he was a child. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Signal amplifier isn’t a diagnostic tool,” Locklear said, his eyes narrowed, “Garner said ‘it’s a necessary element for a transmitter.’ Which means a radio done broke, and you’re trying to patch one together. Have we lost our radio?”

  “No.” Leo ground his teeth, containing the acid in his voice.

  “Would you tell me if we had?”

  Leo shoved himself back down to Locklear’s level, coming eye to eye with the former MP, “Sergeant, I know you think this is some kind of summer camp--”

  “It’s just Kyle and I don’t--”

  “But some of us take our jobs seriously out here, and this whole tongue in cheek thing you’re doing…” Leo waved his hand in the air, unable to find words, so he instead elected to draw them, or conjure them from some distant nether.

  Locklear blinked, processing the strange insult, “For a guy who takes this so serious, you spend an awful lot of time jawing with the Bus Driver.”

  Busted. Leo looked away, working his jaw back and forth. Of course, caught being wrong just made him more frustrated. He could feel his heart trying to punch out of his ribcage and into Locklear’s smug face.

  Locklear planted a hand into the bulkhead, blocking Leo’s path away down the hall. He was containing Leo, pinning him in, “I don’t mind you treatin’ me ‘n the team different. I mind you treatin’ us badly. Now what the hell has crawled up your ass?”

  Leo bites his tongue, then: “We’ve lost contact with Manifest-1.”

  Chapter 3

  Murcielago

  Locklear loomed over Piotr’s shoulder, fixated on the small screen at the center of the console. Leo studied the broad-
shouldered silhouette cast off the amber-hued light of the monitor. That golden glow spared users of eye strain on the long dark travail. He could swear those geniuses back at Houston thought of everything.

  Or maybe they’d just gotten complaints.

  Locklear pointed at the monitor, “See that structural?”

  “Yeah.” Piotr’s grave response reflected the conclusion that Locklear was only just coming to. To be fair, he was newest to the party.

  “Something caved that in from the outside. Dust storm do that?” Locklear glanced back at Leo for the first time in fifteen minutes.

  Leo pursed his lips, doing math in his head, “Not likely. The highest wind speed ever recorded on Mars was sixty two miles an hour. Dangerous to walk around in, but not something that would tear steel.”

  “Just sixty two?”

  Leo shrugged, “Not a lot of atmosphere.”

  Locklear let out a goddammit kind of sigh, “So we got ourselves a skirmish. Thought these farmers didn’t have any guns?”

  “Farms are plenty dangerous, Sergeant.” Leo tried to not twist his face up, hiding his incredulity. Industrialization had turned farming into a factory, with all the natural hazards of a factory. Space travel had doubled that.

  They weren’t tending goats down there, after all. There was plenty of heavy machinery. And if someone wanted to apply that same force to other ends...

  “They need you piglets down there sooner rather than later.” Piotr must have been feeling pretty snappy.

  Leo raised an eyebrow at the nickname. Did he want a broken jaw for his birthday?

  Locklear glanced at Leo, like he was the one that threw the insult, “Piglets?”

  Leo threw up his arms, but Piotr offered up his sacrificial explanation. “New pigs. Cops. Peace officers. Did it really need to get spelled out?”

  “He knew what you meant, Piotr,” Leo hissed back, the one and only warning he’d get.

  “Yeah, I thought it was obvious, but he…” Piotr finally smelled the stench of tension in the air, shutting up. Finally.