by J. S. Morin
“Tow the Squall across the field,” Tanny said. “The grav sled can handle the weight, and it won’t leave a residue of ion wash in the cargo hold.”
Roddy pointed to Tanny, but looked Carl’s way. “See? That’s planning.”
“Maybe you should find Mriy instead of sticking around here,” Tanny said.
He waved his hands in front of his face. “No way; no pay. I had my fill of that kung-fu samurai fencing bullshit. Got cursed last time, remember?” He sat up, wobbling slightly.
There was a greasy smear on the arm of the couch where Carl’s head had rested. “And we’ve gotta clean off anything his head’s touched.”
“I’ll just find a quiet place a few hundred kilometers from here,” Carl said. “I’m already dressed for the colony, and I know the lingo. I can fit in like a resident hitchhiking from town to town. Ten million people live here; it’s not like they all know each other.”
“Fine,” Tanny said. “Get going as soon as we pack a bunch of your personal shit up in that toy raceship of yours.”
“Pray that no one’s stargazing tonight,” Roddy said. “There may not be orbital traffic control around here, but you don’t want some amateur astronomer finding something suspicious in the skies. These chuckleheads would put it in the papers as a UFO sighting. Every bloody one of them’s traveled on a starship at some point in his life, and they still can’t get enough of fucking UFO sightings.”
“I’ll keep it below the radar, chief,” Carl said with a sloppy salute.
Tanny shot Roddy a worried look. “We can’t send him up like this, can we?”
“Sister, it’s either send him as is, or retrofit a star-drive to that Squall in the next couple hours,” Roddy said. “Let’s pump him full off coffee and start cleaning.”
# # #
Fact Sifter Agheli arrived two hours ahead of his estimate. Whether it was through fortunate circumstances or intentional dissembling (fact sifters never “lied”), he had not caught Tanny and Roddy by surprise. The Mobius had been scrubbed and tidied, stripped of recent evidence of Carl’s habitation.
Roddy had split off from the cleaning and taken the star-drive apart. Under the guise of a complete overhaul, he’d reduced it to individual components spread out across the cargo bay floor—not coincidentally covering the area where the Squall had been stored. There were odd bits of magic that were part and parcel to the system, their function a matter for more scrambled minds than his own to untangle. Roddy knew how to clean them, align them, and secure them within the device, but not a damn thing about how to operate them. But as a matter of good faith, it was hard to beat a stripped-down star-drive for convincing the authorities that they weren’t going to run.
There weren’t many starships that could outrun one of Phabian Investigative Services’ corvettes in astral space, let alone without using a star-drive.
The fact sifter was tall for a laaku, a full head taller than Roddy. His fur was gray at the cheeks and chin, his brow prominent. The dusky gray Investigative Services uniform he wore hadn’t a wrinkle upon it, and aside from rank insignia, it bore a patchwork of commendations and certifications over the left breast. He carried his datapad like a loaded blaster. A real pro.
With a quick glance at the datapad, Agheli greeted Roddy at the cargo ramp. “You must be Rodek of Kethlet. Thank you for your cooperation at this late hour local time.”
“My mom doesn’t even call me Rodek anymore. I go by Roddy. I’m a night person anyway; come on in.”
“Is the captain available?” Agheli asked. He stepped aboard, followed by two assistants: a human and another laaku. The human carried a bulky scanner. It was going to be one of those inspections.
“Yeah, lemme grab her,” Roddy said. But in this case, “grabbing” was just hitting the nearest comm panel. “Yo, sleeping beauty, the inquisition is here.” He turned off the comm with the butt of his fist.
Agheli gave him a disapproving frown. “This isn’t an inquisition. We’re here to collect facts surrounding the investigation of Bradley Ramsey’s death. Fact sifters are scattered across the galaxy right now doing likewise. Currently, we have no reason to question your alibi.”
Roddy sighed. “Sorry, buddy. My best friend dies, and next thing I know, I got vultures circling. I’d cleaned up my act, but this set me back drinking again.” He pulled a can of Earth’s Preferred from his coveralls and popped it open, taking a long drink.
“Once we’re done here,” Agheli’s laaku tech said, “I can get you on the list at a psychological detox clinic. Those bloodstream cleansers are a scam. Doesn’t stop you from getting pulled right back in.”
“Thanks, pal,” Roddy said, taking another drink. The prick. Maybe he didn’t know how to enjoy himself, but Roddy did.
The door to the common room opened. “Sifter Agheli,” Tanny said. “Nice to meet you.” Her hair was mussed from recent contact with a pillow, but she was fully clothed. She’d have been down to the cargo bay quicker if she didn’t have to make it look like she’d been sleeping when Roddy commed.
“You as well,” Aghlei replied. “Pleasantries concluded. Let us begin. Captain Ramsey, I will need your ship’s logs and sensor database. Rodek, please escort my techs through the ship, rendering whatever assistance they require.”
Wonderful. Not only were they planning to scan the Mobius down to the rivets, they expected him to pitch in to help. “Sure thing, boss.”
# # #
“These records are atrocious,” Agheli said, horror echoing in his voice. “How do you people operate a business this way?”
“Do we look like we’re successful?” Tanny asked. “Besides, we specialize in discretion; same code of ethics as an independent investigators-for-hire. Once we receive final payment on a job, we scorch the records on it.”
“You realize I can’t help but find that highly suspicious,” Agheli said. “My job is to collect facts—facts related to criminal investigations. In my professional experience, falsified and destroyed records are nearly always a sign of illegal conduct.”
“You can find me suspicious all you want,” Tanny replied. “We don’t make what we do much of a secret. We mostly operate out in border space or around unsanctioned colonies outside ARGO jurisdiction. Maybe the money isn’t consistent, but we don’t get buttoned up in little uniforms anymore.” She poked a finger at Agheli, but stopped short of touching him. “If we hadn’t been so hard-scrabble the last couple months, Carl wouldn’t have bothered with that contest.”
“Yes… the Silde Slims Cadet Racer Challenge,” Agheli said. “Mr. Ramsey made quite a commotion in the racing community, didn’t he? As far as you knew, was he planning on sharing the race winnings with the rest of his crew?”
“Yeah,” Tanny replied. “I mean, you hear stories about guys getting greedy and taking it all for themselves, but that wasn’t Carl’s style. If he wanted to make big money, he’d have easier ways than trying to disappear on us with 250k terras.”
“Please elaborate,” Agheli said, making notes on his datapad.
Tanny shrugged. “If you’re any kind of fact sifter, you already know who my father is. Don Rucker owns a good chunk of Mars. He liked Carl. It’s that whole brash, flippant, tough-guy thing fighter pilots get good at, and Carl’s great at it. My dad was a sucker for it, too. Standing job offer any time Carl wanted it. But that wasn’t his style—it’s not our style. We might travel on the edge of law and order, but we live strictly on the law-abiding side.”
“I see…”
Tanny scratched at the back of her neck and continued. “I mean, we do stumble into shit now and then. Hadrian IV… once we figured what was going on there, we contacted the One Church to send humanitarian aid.”
Agheli tapped at his datapad for a moment. “I’m not familiar with the incident you mentioned.”
Tanny waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll look it up later. Just know: that was us. We did what anyone with a sense of conscience would have had to do there. Kidnapping sentients to displa
y in a zoo?” She shook her head and shuddered, hoping she wasn’t overdoing it.
The questioning went on for another hour and a half. The fact sifter delved into her rocky relationship with Carl, her actions and whereabouts leading up to the events in the final race of the Silde Slims contest, and Carl’s known associates. The crew had gone over the story they’d use for the authorities, knowing that an investigation was bound to catch up with them, but it was still exhausting to lie throughout an entire conversation. If Agheli were secretly running a truth scan on her, it would have failed for lack of a baseline reading.
“As for the remainder of your crew, where might I find them?” Agheli asked. It was a signal flare that he was finally finished with her.
“It was just me and Roddy here when you commed,” Tanny replied.
Agheli held up a placating hand. “Of course. I didn’t expect you to produce them on short notice. But I do expect you to provide their present whereabouts.”
“They’re big boys and girls,” Tanny said. “I don’t keep a tracker on them. Mort and Esper went to New Camelot. Mriy is touring the Celestial Empire. They’ll meander back here eventually, but they’re not on a schedule—or a leash.”
“I see…” Agheli replied with a frown.
# # #
After an awkwardly interventionist first impression, Roddy found himself taking a liking to Maikai—Mikey—of Zenlon. The laaku inspector, unlike so many to look over the Mobius before him, seemed to grasp the beauty of an ugly ship.
“Can’t say I’d have used an aqua-ski engine to recycle the ship’s air,” Mikey said as he closed the access panel. “Why the extra joules?”
“Needed it,” Roddy replied. “The base model was a diplomatic shuttle. Life-support designers assumed it would be landing on A-tech planets. We land in enough shitty atmospheres that I had to triple the filtering. Stock O2 pump would have been like breathing through a tube.”
The life-support systems were a wild card. If Mikey was crazy-good at his job, the laaku might have been able to piece together a DNA profile of the recent occupants of the ship based on residue in the air filtration system. There just hadn’t been the time to completely scrub a system that ran throughout the entire ship. The lucky break was that Carl’s DNA should have been all over the place—just not recent samples.
Mikey jerked a thumb at the human tech, and the big oaf hefted the access panel back into place. Roddy had caught that the human’s name was Gustavson, but the guy had hardly said a word through the whole inspection. As far as Mikey seemed concerned, Gustavson was just a portable pair of arms.
“Let’s go have a look at those crew quarters,” Mikey said. They had already inspected five of the six rooms the crew used for sleeping and personal effects. He had diverted them away from Mort’s room before either of the inspectors set foot inside. “I backed up my data to my ship. Anything goes wrong in your wizard’s room, Investigative Services will cover the cost of new scanning equipment.”
“Won’t cover the cost of you, though,” Roddy said glumly. He’d hoped that like so many inspectors before him, Mikey would be dissuaded from risking his A-tech poring over wizardly trappings. But unlike most of those others, Mikey was ready to let everything get scrambled in an effort to be thorough.
Mikey paused. “This wizard of yours… some kind of psychopath?”
Yes. Roddy wanted to just out and say it. Mort was a brutal killer on the run from the Convocation for two decades with a trail of bodies in his wake. “Naw, just don’t trust a thing in there, personally. If you gotta go in, just watch yourself. I’ll be standing outside.”
“Maybe we ought to—” Gustavson began.
“Quiet,” Mikey snapped. “We’re going to do our job. Wizards aren’t dangerous to creatures of pure science. My own unwavering belief in the laws of physics will protect me. Wizarding is all about belief.”
Roddy shrugged. It was a nice way to go through life, if you could keep out of sight of real wizards. He tended to doubt that Mikey believed in science half as much as Mort believed against it. They traipsed through the cargo hold, past Roddy’s dismantled star-drive, and through the common room.
“Shame we’re on a tight schedule,” Mikey said. “Wouldn’t mind getting a look around this backwater. It’s like a museum full of living people. Humans… am I right? Go figure.” He chuckled, drawing a grunt from Gustavson. “Aw, can it, ya big baby. Can’t take a little joke at the expense of your dopey DNA cousins? It’s not like I lumped you in with those retroverts. You’ve got half a brain in that oversize skull of yours.”
Roddy stepped in front as they reached Mort’s quarters, resting a hand on the door handle. “Last chance to back off. Our wizard knows his shit. If he wanted stuff hidden, you wouldn’t find it in there if you stood on it.”
Mikey narrowed his eyes. “That some sort of coded clue?”
Roddy clenched his feet into fists, trying not to match the gesture with his hands. It was a giveaway of stress if Mikey was looking down; even Gustavson probably knew it, working on Phabian. For all the inconvenience of his presence, Roddy didn’t want to see either of the two inspectors get hurt. Knowing he’d be gone for days or weeks and that an investigation was a possibility, who knew what Mort might have done in there.
“No. Just trying to get through to you that your best-case scenario is finding nothing,” Roddy said. He needed a beer, but the last thing he wanted was another lecture from Mikey. If it might have stopped the laaku inspector, he’d have given it a shot. But say this for Miakai of Zenlon: he was a professional.
“Thanks, pal,” Mikey said. “We’ll be careful.” With that, Mikey stepped aside and let Gustavson precede him into Mort’s quarters.
A part of Roddy wanted to linger at the doorway. It was the same part that watched races for the chance to see a crash, or eavesdropped on Carl and Tanny when they were fighting. But in this case, there was no holovid to protect him from speeding shrapnel, no intervening wall to keep him from being noticed. If Mort rigged up something to suck intruders into an extra-spatial vortex, or to summon a ravenous swarm of teaspoon-sized demons to devour them, he wanted no part of it.
He cracked open a beer and waited.
Agheli and Tanny returned from the cockpit. “Where are my inspectors?” Agheli asked. By the look on Tanny’s face, she had weathered quite a storm.
“Checking out the ship’s wizard’s room,” Roddy replied. He noted the sour look Agheli gave his beer can. “What? Ain’t illegal here. If you want to file it in your report, file it. Next time I visit the home world I’ll know to look over my shoulder for substance abuse enforcement.”
“I’d prefer you sober for your deposition,” Agheli said.
“That hull breached the night I heard about Carl,” Roddy said. “Ain’t putting air back in it now.” To emphasize his point, he took another drink. “Go ahead and ask away.” He wasn’t afraid of a few questions. As far as he knew, Carl was dead. The idiot had a few beers in him before he took off in the stolen Squall. Odds were decent that he’d slammed it into a diner or a movie theater, or some other primitive local structure.
The door to Mort’s quarters opened.
All eyes turned to the two inspectors. “We found nothing,” Mikey said.
“Nothing,” Gustavson echoed.
“Very well then,” Agheli said with a curt nod. “Return to the ship. I’ll be along once I’ve interviewed Mr. Rodek.”
“We did a thorough and complete job to the best of our abilities,” Mikey said. His voice was mechanical, with awkward pauses after each word like he was reading from a script.
“I concur,” Gustavson said. “We did our jobs well and found nothing. There is nothing further to investigate.” He had the same odd cadence to his speech.
“Yes, yes. Now off with you,” Agheli said, shooing them away with a flick of his wrist.
Roddy hid his smirk behind a beer can. It was probably going to be the last amusement he’d have until Agheli was gone,
so he enjoyed it while he could.
# # #
The comm system was shut down. External lights were off. He wasn’t running anything but close-range sensors—strictly on passive scan. Cruising along at speeds never exceeding a couple hundred klicks, he had the ion signature of a harvest drone—a compromise that Peractorum made with modern science because so few people moved to a retrovert colony to do backbreaking manual labor. Carl’s Squall was incognito and content to stay that way.
Carl was incognito as well, still dressed in his old-Earth finest, blue hair concealed under thick layers of dye and grease. That part was lucky. Being chased off the Mobius on short notice would have been a lot more awkward without a disguise. The four beers—or was it five?—before he left were less helpful. In the dark, on an unfamiliar world, he had no idea where he was heading.
There was moonlight to see by. The ground was washed-out colors, but it showed the contours Carl needed to navigate around. The Squall handled sluggishly, reacting a fraction of a second after he wanted it to. It was amazing that the pile of bolts had won him a race, considering the trouble he was having with it.
Most of the countryside he flew over was undeveloped. Grassy plains, stretches of forest, a few shrimpy mountains or good-sized hills, depending on which way you looked at them. Here and there, he’d pass over a road, or see lights from a city—if you could call them that—on the horizon. But he wasn’t looking for a city right then. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, other than a good night’s sleep, a place to take a leak, and maybe find some eggs and bacon in the morning. This seemed like the sort of world where he could manage all three just about anywhere. But first he was going to need to make up his mind and put the Squall to bed somewhere safe.
Swooping in low, Carl followed a major highway. It was the middle of the night, and late-night traffic didn’t fit with the vibe of the colony. Skimming along a meter off the ground on repulsors, he might as well have been in a Chrysler or a Chevy, out for a joyride. The way he was dressed, it should have been a motorcycle. There was a split just ahead, guarded by a billboard nestled among tall bushes. Carl fired forward thrusters and came to a stop close enough to read it by the moonlight.