Indra Station

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “All of the on-station systems are fully operational, Ms. Misra,” said an unknown male voice. “The only thing that hasn’t been tested is the full-scale surface power uplink and all of the features that depend upon it,” he said.

  “That is a rather significant set of features to remain untested at this late stage,” Preethy said.

  “The shielding was the issue. We had to stop installation partway through and train a whole new crew once we took on TIS.”

  “I’m familiar with the nature of the timeline interruptions, but I thought I’d made it clear that we were to make up for it by running double staff and a third shift. I don’t like the weather forecasts I’m seeing.”

  “We were still short almost our full third-shift crew until yesterday morning, and we only got them aboard a few minutes ago. They’re on station now, and we’ve just gotten them entered into the system. The whole process took days longer than anticipated because we had some trouble with the credentials. I was going to forward the new crew manifest to you, but you were already on your way up here, so I figured you could review it in person.”

  “Let me see…”

  Michella could barely hear the tones of authorizing access. Preethy continued to talk, now with the vaguely distracted tone of voice of someone multitasking.

  “I ran the readings from the quarter-power system test past the lab crew back on the surface. They seemed promising. Even at that low level, we were getting measurable changes to wind speed.”

  Michella raised an eyebrow and made a note. Wind speed?

  “I don’t mind saying, Ms. Misra. I had my doubts about all of this. If a system could pull this sort of thing off at this scale, why isn’t it more common on other planets?”

  “Other planets have far more varied weather, and don’t have nearly the power surplus we have. I’m sure if Verna Coronet had an ultra-high-frequency surface-to-orbit power transmission array, they’d be taking a more active role in their weather patterns as well.”

  Michella scribbled Weather control? in her pad.

  Preethy continued. “Why am I not seeing any crew images on these personnel reports?”

  “Damn it, are they not there?”

  There was the sound of shifting and creaking, like someone was somewhat frantically fetching something from elsewhere.

  “We might have to fire the guy I’ve got on crew processing. I told him three times that he needed to add those on, and he kept taking them back out.”

  “Is it one of ours or one of theirs?”

  “One of theirs. We didn’t want any TIS hands on wrenches until we’d run them through their paces. Until this batch, most of their crew has been involved in the bureaucracy. That way we could prevent too much damage if they did things wrong.”

  “There are few things that can do more damage than bureaucracy.”

  “I guess so. Here are the images.”

  There was silence for a moment. When Preethy spoke again, Michella had to strain to hear. She was speaking much lower than before.

  “These individuals are currently on the crew? They are in the station now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen to me carefully. I want you to revoke all access privileges from anyone from TIS immediately.”

  “Yes, Ms. Misra.”

  There was the sound of fumbling with electronics.

  “I want logs of any actions taken by any crew that came over as a part of this contract. The man you’ve got listed as Robin Hartnett is Ramses Hatch. If he’s here, at least a dozen more of David Kelso’s crew is here.”

  Michella’s eyes widened. Normally, she’d be running these names through her slidepad to see who they were, but David Kelso was all too familiar to her. Deeply entrenched in organized crime for the better part of a century, what was now the Kelso Family had evolved from one of the first crime syndicates to establish itself on more than one planet. They were to Nick Patel’s gang what VectorCorp was to Rehnquist Intercom: a bigger, scarier version of the same monster, hungry for a chance to make themselves the only game in a very big town.

  She furiously scribbled down the name and double-checked that she was still recording. She jotted down notes for follow-up and listened intently. Then, without warning, the lights shut off.

  “What is this?” Preethy snapped.

  “I don’t know. It’s not a failure. Everything else is still up. Someone must have powered down the lighting grid.”

  “I do not like the timing…”

  Michella pocketed the now useless pad, as she couldn’t take notes in pitch black. Worse, the still active slidepad was weakly illuminated, meaning anyone who looked in her direction would spot her immediately. She stuffed it into her bag and tried to work out what to do. If she’d had more time to plan, she would have made certain her hiding place was farther out of the way, since the last thing she would have wanted was to find herself directly between crew and any location they might have to get to. Now she was in a much worse situation, adrift in a crew corridor with nothing but the dim light of various environmental monitors and some glow-in-the-dark safety markers to navigate by.

  Emergency flashlights clicked on in the room where the meeting was taking place. Michella pulled herself down the nearest corridor to avoid being spotted if they came this way. Farther along the corridor she’d chosen, on the other side of a still-shut crew door, another set of flashlights clicked on. Michella launched herself away from the door with a bit too much haste and ended up missing the handrails on the opposite wall. Her escape turned into a thumping, painful tumble through the darkened corridor.

  When she finally caught hold of something, she pulled herself into what seemed to be a doorway. A swipe of her slidepad revealed it to be above her access privilege to open. She huddled in the doorway and listened. She was too far from the voices echoing through the halls to make out what they were saying, but there were certainly more of them now than just Preethy and the supervisor. The new voices were louder, angrier. There was a burst of shouting, the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh, and then silence.

  Whoever this rogue crew was, Michella suspected they had just successfully taken control of the station.

  Chapter 4

  Sarafa was a curious concept for a fine restaurant. The decor made an earnest attempt to give the dining room the feel of an outdoor bazaar. Colorful cloth canopies and authentic-looking facades covered the ceiling and walls. Some well-executed lighting tricks provided the atmosphere of a late afternoon on Earth. Spicy, complex smells wafted through the air to such a degree that Lex was reasonably certain they’d somehow perfected some manner of “miscellaneous Indian delights” incense. Clashing with the street-fair ambiance was the far more typical restaurant seating and attire. Everyone was dressed to the nines and seated at tables heaped with the same linens and silverware one would expect from a stuffy high-end haute cuisine eatery. The menu swung back in the other direction, with faithful renditions of street food. The place clearly couldn’t decide between chi-chi poo-poo or hoi polloi.

  Lex had erred on the side of fanciness when he’d picked his wardrobe for the date. Getting the job with the league had meant he technically didn’t need to try getting work as a chauffeur anymore, but he’d hung on to the three suits he’d purchased back then. He almost considered wearing his tux, just because he knew overdressing would make Michella laugh, but he instead went with the next level down in formality, a navy-blue suit that had cost him an arm and a leg.

  He pushed around the remaining half of an appetizer-sized serving of something the waiter called a kati roll. To his uncultured eye it looked like a breakfast burrito, which had been fine with him when it had arrived. But that was fifteen minutes ago.

  “I hope this isn’t the sort of thing that gets gross once it cools down,” he said. He tugged his slidepad from his pocket and checked the time. “Eight-thirty. Well, she’s only a half-hour late,” he grumbled. “That’s still on schedule in
Michella time.”

  The last three messages he’d sent her had bounced back thanks to the particularly poor state of the communication network for the last few hours, but with no other options, he fired off another. It failed immediately.

  “Man, I really hope they have this cleared up before the race,” he said.

  Lex weighed the pros and cons of eating the other half of the appetizer. As he did, he slowly became aware of someone quietly trying to get his attention. He looked around and quickly found the culprit.

  The restaurant had a blatant division between their regular clientele and VIPs. Preethy had seen to it that Lex was seated as one of the latter’s tables. He was at a two-seat table near the edge of a slightly elevated and clearly roped off seating area. There was actually a handful of open tables in this area, confirming his suspicion that the impossibility of getting a table at this place was more about who they let in than who they had room for. At the edge of the VIP section was a ring of tables that may as well have been marked “entourage only.” Its seats were subtly posher than the others, but clearly not to the same degree as those behind the velvet ropes. Jon and Donnie were seated at one such table, and Donnie was doing a terrible job of being casual about his excitement.

  “Lex! Hey!” Donnie hissed, as though doing so magically made their conversation less bothersome to the surrounding tables. “Isn’t this place great?”

  Lex nodded, then flagged down a server. “Hey, listen. Is there any way we can move those two to this table over here?” he asked.

  The waiter, who must have gotten extra credit on his snootiness training at restaurant school, came just shy of sneering at the prospect of bringing up some of the lowly common folk.

  “Are they guests of yours?” he asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “You should have made a reservation for four instead of two then, sir.”

  “They’re not that sort of guests.”

  “Then they are seated where they were intended to be seated.”

  “Right, but you hear how that big guy keeps whispering at the top of his lungs? That’s going to keep happening until we move those two up here.”

  “If he makes a scene, I shall have him removed. We have standards here at Sarafa.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend that. The guy he’s seated with works for GolanaNet News. One way or another, this’ll end up on the newsfeeds if you boot him out.”

  The waiter’s impassive expression did a respectable job of concealing the withering hatred just beneath the surface, but he relented. A snap of his fingers conjured some underlings, and a minute later Donnie and Jon were at an adjoining table.

  “Oh my gosh. You did not have to do that, Lex. I can’t believe we’re eating dinner with you.”

  “Donnie, we could eat dinner with them whenever we want. Please calm down,” Jon said, glancing around to see how much of a scene was being made. “I’d love to say he’s not always like this, but he’s always like this.”

  “Excuse me for still having so much joie de’ vivre,” Donnie said.

  “So, where’s Michella?” Jon asked.

  “Wherever she is, she must be having the time of her life, because she’s been there for a half hour too long,” Lex said.

  Jon shook his head. “I knew she wouldn’t be able to actually take time off. Her loss, though. This is quite a place.”

  Donnie pointed to the roll on the table. “What is that? Is it any good?”

  “Why don’t you guys split it?” Lex said, pushing it to the edge of the table. “I don’t think it’ll be up Michella’s alley.”

  Jon looked Lex over. “That’s some outfit. Looking sharp. Between that and the restaurant, what’s the occasion? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I do mind you asking, Jon.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” Jon said.

  “No. No. I didn’t mean to…” He took a breath. “It’s just that the occasion sort of requires Mitch to be here, and her tardiness is working on my nerves more than usual.”

  Jon shrugged. “Mitch’ll be Mitch.”

  “She sure—”

  Donnie gasped. “Omigosh, you are going to propose!”

  “What? No,” Jon said.

  “Fancy restaurant, fancy outfit. There are candles on the table. Lex is testy and anxious. This is basically the exact same situation as when you proposed to me. Except back then it was at a Thai-fusion place. He’s absolutely going to propose,” Donnie said.

  “You want to keep that down, Donnie. This is the sort of thing that hinges upon the element of surprise,” Lex said.

  “So it’s true!” Jon reached across and shoved his shoulder. “What took you so long?”

  “Yeah, well. As you can see, she doesn’t exactly make it easy.”

  “Where’s the ring? Do you have it with you?” Donnie asked.

  Lex glanced toward the door. Murphy’s Law required that if Michella was going to arrive, the moment he revealed the ring would be the moment she’d choose. There was no sign of her, so he slipped the box from his pocket.

  “I’m not exactly loaded. Most of my adviser fees went to zeroing out some debt, and the big paychecks don’t roll in unless I start winning nonexhibition races,” Lex said.

  Jon popped the box open to reveal a small but respectable engagement ring. The diamond had the unnatural clarity of a manufactured diamond, and the band was dark with an unusual luster.

  “What’s this made out of?” Jon asked.

  “Iridium. When I first started doing freelance deliveries, my intuition wasn’t that great. I ended up getting tracked by interceptors a lot. The sort of places that are handy to hide out in are debris fields, etcetera.”

  “Why are those good places to hide? Aren’t they pretty sparse?” Donnie said.

  “Yeah, but not nearly as sparse as the rest of space. On one hand, it gives you places to hide. On the other, you’ve got a pretty good chance of smashing into something beefier than the average navigation shields can handle. If they ever get through, you’re pretty much a goner. One time, I landed and found a fist-sized chunk of pure interstellar iridium lodged in the belly of Ol’ Betsy. Should have killed me, but it didn’t. I decided there was something special about that rock.”

  “Aw…” Donnie said.

  Jon snapped the box shut and handed it back. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

  “Here’s hoping she gets the opportunity. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to set up a proposal. Depending on how you’re counting, this’ll be strike three.”

  “Yeesh,” Donnie said.

  “On the very likely chance that today once again isn’t the day, I’m trusting you two to keep this a secret.”

  “Mum’s the word,” Jon said.

  Lex slipped the ring box back in his pocket as the waiter returned.

  “And will you be placing your dinner order, sir?” he asked.

  He checked his slidepad one last time. “Do you guys wrap up leftovers?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Okay. I’m going to order both our dinners. But have a doggie bag ready, because I’m not holding my breath for my date to show up.”

  #

  In a dark, cool room some distance away, a scrawny man in a button-down shirt with a clipped-on security tag gazed wearily at the array of screens before him. His tag labeled him Technician Anand. The room had lights, but it seemed pointless to turn them on with the constant glow of the flatscreens as an alternative. Granted, this opinion may have been colored by the throbbing headache he had, which in turn may have had something to do with the amount of imbibing he’d done at the previous night’s get-together.

  “Why did I agree to try absinthe?” he mumbled, fishing around in his pocket for some painkillers.

  He cracked the lid on a bottle of water and washed down twice the recommended dose, then turned his bleary eyes back to the endless sequence of scrolling numbers that made up the largest prop
ortion of his job. A slidepad in his pocket beeped. He pulled it out. The screen lit up with a reminder. He dismissed it, then leaned forward and tapped a command on a larger screen built into the console.

  “Evening system validation,” he said. “Manual check of array dishes begins now. Dish 1… nominal. Dish 2… nominal…”

  He droned his way through a job that he was quite certain a computer could have done far better than he could, particularly in his current state. Just short of the end of the mantra of nominals that happened every four hours, he got another notification, this time from the facility monitors themselves. Someone had requested entry to the node courtyard.

  Tech Anand scratched his head, then glanced at the schedule. He had a good four hours left in his shift, and thus at least three hours before he could sneak out. No one should be along before then.

  He finished recording the validation, then submitted it and stood. “Probably just one of the guys from another node wanting to use the good bathroom.”

  Tech Anand stood and stalked over to the security station to get a better look at his visitor. A TIS hovervan sat at the gate. The man behind the wheel was a veritable mountain. He was surprised they made jumpsuits to fit the barrel-chested hulk.

  The tech tapped the intercom. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, we’re here for training.”

  He scratched his head. “Training?”

  “Yeah. We’re TIS crew. You’ve got to train us up on this place.”

  Anand scratched his head again and scrolled up the duty roster. He wasn’t due for any students. But then, he wasn’t supposed to be alone in the control node of the array. And a student meant he could pawn off the worst of the work.

  “Could you scan your badge, please?” he said.

  The large man tugged something from his collar and flashed it in front of the reader at the gate. His credentials checked out.

  “Milton Milliner,” Anand said to himself. “If ever there was a name that didn’t suit a guy…”

  “Why didn’t they give you gate privileges, Milton?” he said.