Starliner (The Intergalactic Investigation Bureau Book 1)

by John P. Logsdon

  “That’s right, and another thing... Wait, what?”

  “You heard me. You all put on this tough guy act until someone calls you on it. I see it all the time. So, yes, by all means, I dare you to go on strike.”

  “Is that so?” the Gheptian said with a sinister grin. “You want a strike, lady? You got a strike.” He turned around and yelled out to his crew, “Drop those boxes and contact the union brass. We’re walking!”

  Telian was quite pleased. She would have to contact The Leader and tell him of the new infliction on the CCOP. He would be ecstatic.

  Bob, however, was fuming. “What have you done?”

  “Precisely what The Captain would have wanted me to do, Friend Bob. Are you not elated?”

  “No, I’m not. How are the shipments going to get out in time? How will the workers get their materials? You’re going to shut down the manufacturing division by doing this! And you don’t even have the authority you pretended to have!”

  “I know.” Telian clapped her hands. “It’s so exciting. I will surely be in The Captain’s favor for this, and The Leader will rain accolades on me for some time to come.”

  “This is terrible,” Bob grumbled. “I can’t believe I’m in the company of someone that would do this.”

  “Now just a moment,” Telian said swiftly. “You are no longer part of the CCOP. You were fired, Friend Bob. Fired!”

  “Let go, technically speaking. I wasn’t fired.”

  “Was there cause?”

  “Higher-ups wanted more money.”

  “I mean, was there just cause due to your performance as a mid-level manager?”

  “No, they said I did a good job.”

  “Then you were fired!”

  “No. If they had cause and let me go it that would have been a firing. They had no cause other than they wanted more money, so it was a layoff.”

  Telian dropped her hand from her hip. “That’s how it works? I thought it was the other way around.”

  “Have you ever had a job?”

  “Of course I have,” she said, shuffling her feet. “Mostly of the night-time variety, but I’ve never been fired.

  “Neither have I.”

  “Or laid off,” she pointed out. “Either way, what’s done is done. You were let go from a job that didn’t appreciate you. You did well and they got rid of you because they wanted more money in their pockets.”

  “Right, that’s what I’ve been saying.”

  “Don’t you see a problem with that?”

  “Well, yeah, but I’m not an executive, so I don’t make those decisions. They have more information than I do. They know how these things work.”

  “Sounds pretty flimsy to me, Friend Bob.” Telian moved in closer. “You gave a good portion of your life to this company. You worked hard, consistently exceeded expectations, and the moment one of the executives wants a new shiny toy, all of your past efforts go unnoticed and you become a few more credits in the wallet of someone wealthier than the CCOP will ever make you.”

  Bob gingerly lifted her arm off of his and walked toward one of the walls. She felt for him, but what she had done was exactly the kind of thing The Leader would be proud of. Bob was leaning on the wall when Telian roused her VizScreen.

  “Hello, Telian,” The Leader said.

  “I know this wasn’t in the plan, but I have good news.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve managed to get the dock workers at manufacturing to go on strike.”

  “Oh?”

  Telian relayed the events.

  “Well done, Telian,” The Leader said. “Truly well done.”

  “It was nothing, really,” she replied, eyes aglow.

  “Oh, indeed it was something. It was the perfect way for security cameras to pick you up with our new Friend Bob right before you enter the main Hub. Don’t you see that as an issue?”

  She did not reply. It had seemed like the perfect plan and she had been certain that The Leader would agree.

  “But—”

  “I will fix the feed. Maybe not all is lost, but you must be ever vigilant in the knowledge that I, and only I, am to plan any escapades. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Telian replied, not bothering to mask the contempt she was feeling.

  “Good,” The Leader said. “There is a lot riding on every step of our agenda and we need perfection. Now, the issue is that you must get phase one of the plan completed while all the attention is focused on the docks. I will use your mishap as a diversionary tactic.”

  The Leader disconnected the link and Telian’s VizScreen faded away, leaving her to watch the exodus of workers from the docks. It was a good plan no matter what he said. He was just jealous that she was the one who thought of it. Video was easily adjusted and tracks were simply covered. This little shipping department was too small in the grand scheme of things to be anything but a blip on the radar. Telian was proud of herself and, she believed, The Captain would also have been proud of her quick thinking.

  Bob had returned from his sulking and seemed to be standing a little taller.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I owe them nothing. If it weren’t for my career, I might still have a wife today. I gave them everything I had and they dumped me for a few extra credits. There was no loyalty from their side; there is no loyalty from mine.”

  Mingled with her own personal victory, Telian felt something more than basic chip resonance at Bob’s statement. Something beyond promiscuity. Maybe there really was something more behind this middle-aged former middle-manager.

  “We need to get to the central Hub.”

  “The Hub? But...” Bob paused. “Never mind. Follow me.”

  Telian found it difficult to keep up as Bob entered through the door that the former dock workers had left open. Bob was a Mechanican on a mission. He darted through the corridors, bolted down stairways, hustled across catwalks, and even shimmied up and down ladders, going ever deeper into the core of the CCOP.

  Had she not known better, Telian would have thought Bob was half his expected lifecycle.

  During the entire trip the sound of humming increased.

  They stopped for a moment and tucked away into a crevice while a couple of guards walked by. Telian could feel the vibrations in the wall. She could make out the faint “clink-clink-clink” of the gears at the central Hub.

  “Let’s go,” Bob said and then resumed his breakneck pace.

  Within a few miniclicks they were staring at the largest set of gears Telian had ever set eyes on.

  She had studied the designs over the last couple of weeks. The linkages were configured to supply the precise amount of torque to rotate the station on its horizontal axis within the forcefield, thus providing artificial gravity. It was a blueprint that came from the Engineering Research Division. They had created many novel ideas since then, but nothing to rival the central Hub. Compared to the teeth on the largest gear, Bob’s hydraulic upgrade was paltry. But there was a fatal flaw in the gear system that she’d learned in her studies. If any one piece of the mechanism went out of whack, the entire thing would be brought to a screeching halt.

  It was fragile and there weren’t any real security checkpoints. The assumption was that nobody would do anything to adversely affect the CCOP on such a grand scale. People didn’t think like that. Of course the people who actually didn’t think like that were the ones that were keen to say, “People just don’t think like that.”

  The click-click of the gears matched perfectly with her internal clock. She ran through the schematics in her libraries, comparing each wheel, bolt, and post to the real thing. At least those that she could see. The rest of them were housed inside the base of the CCOP, extending all the way to a mirror image on the other side of the world.

  “Okay,” Bob said as he peered up at the largest gear. “Now what?”

  They were standing near the edge, looking down into a crevice that the wheel spun into, connecting linkages to another
that was connected to another gear that ran underground.

  “We find a way to stop it.”

  Bob spun around and, in a robotic sense, guffawed. “Woah, what?”

  “I don’t mean right now, Bob,” she said in a huff. “We just figure out a way to do it so that when The Captain arrives to retrieve all our Mechanican brethren we can leave safely. It’s nothing to worry about anyway, they’ll have it fixed up in no time.”

  Bob just stared at her. “I was with you up until now. But this...this is just too much.”

  “What reason did you think I wanted to find the Hub? To take pictures?”

  “Well, no, but...I don’t know.”

  “Now you do, and now is when you need to pick a side, Friend Bob. I can’t keep reassuring you every five miniclicks!”

  Actually, she thought, maybe this would be the perfect time for a little reinforcement on what Bob could expect if he were cooperative. Something about doing the naughty in the central Hub while standing under all these gears seemed rather appealing, especially with the way those turbines were humming.

  She stepped in front of him and traced a line from his forehead down to his stomach, and then looked him in the eyes and grabbed his hydraulics, finding it in full form.

  His reaction wasn’t at all what she had expected.

  He yelped and jumped backwards, slipping off the platform.

  A moment later, a brief crunch ended his screams as his head slid between two of the largest sets of gears ever imagined.

  “Bob!”

  The turbines stopped humming.

  The gears had stopped.

  The CCOP had come to a halt.

  OOPSIE DAISY

  “WHAT’S THE GOOD word, people?” Dresker asked as the team gathered back in the IIB meeting room.

  Everyone started talking at once, which was bad since he was a bit dazed from his sugar high. Nothing like a nice half-dozen donuts to stop your mind from being interested in eating a half-dozen donuts. The stimulants in Carbenian’s Best were fighting for brain share but the sugar was winning the battle.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Dresker said, holding up his hands. “Let’s have a bit of order to this, shall we? Lemoolie, since your bit is a little off-topic, you go first.”

  She initiated her VizScreen and fed the data to the main screen. “Shows dat der is plenty of money. No reason to do layoffs. Someone der has da predilecshun of doing bad fings, I fink.”

  The side benefit of letting Lemoolie go first was that she was efficient. She always gave just enough information, often containing one or two words that were beyond his dictionary, which Dresker assumed was a tactic she’d employed to get him to push for a full investigation. Other than that, she kept her data close to the vest. Her tag line was that companies, in general, were full of nefarious people. Dresker concurred, even if his definition was broader.

  “We may have to pursue them further,” Dresker said, taking a note. “For now, though, let’s just keep an eye on their financial activity and see if anything concrete comes up.” He took another sip of Carbenian’s, trying to give the spices a fighting chance against the sugar. “Hawkins?”

  Hawkins tipped his hat slightly. “We found a couple of fellers down at the park playing Fiscal Prudence and they was—”

  “Fiscal Prudence?”

  “Greed,” Elwood offered.

  “Oh,” Dresker said, surprised. “It’s real name is Fiscal Prudence?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Interesting,” Dresker mused. It wasn’t a popular game on the outer worlds and he wasn’t much into games. “Sorry, go on.”

  “Well, these boys mentioned that they’d seen a mid-size CrushBot swing by in the morning. Now I thought that was rather odd bein’ that them things is usually down in the lowers.”

  “Could have been sent up for any reason.”

  “Could do,” Hawkins answered. “Thought on it fer a bit, too, but I’m after figuring it’s too much coincidence. I just reckon that it makes more sense that there CrushBot had something to do with that Mechanican feller getting rearranged, if you catch my drift.”

  Dresker did, and he would have made the connection on his own had he not just dropped a half-dozen pastries down his gullet. He wanted to roll his eyes at himself, but instead he said, “Excellent. I’m glad to see we’ve all got our thinking caps on. Anything else?”

  “Probably nothing, but you remember the old Hughes building?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s now the home of that Starliner religion.”

  “And?”

  “Like I said, might be nothing, but we had two bots a few blocks up from there, one the crushing sort and the other the sort that’s after getting crushed, and, well, that place is full of bots. Anyhoo, I said to Elwood that I thought something didn’t smell right about the place. Can’t reckon as to what, but somethin’s-a-knockin’ on this old fella’s cellar. Just a feeling.”

  With Hawkins having a feeling about The Starliner building and Zarliana making a mention of The Starliner religion earlier that day, Dresker decided to tuck the information away just in case. He couldn’t imagine what the two had to do with each other, but stranger correlations had happened on the CCOP.

  “Good intel gathering there, gentlemen. Especially the part about the CrushBot. Damn likely that thing had something to do with the demise of our Mr. Walter Blitterbent.”

  After taking another strong pull from his mug, Dresker said, “The next thing we need to rivet down is why that CrushBot bent our pal Walter out of shape. Was he actually suicidal and thought this was a good way to go?” He pulled up the image of the crossed-out suicide note that Elwood had picked up from the scene. “I can’t fathom that, but I’m not a Mechanican.” He wiped his eye. “It could be this CrushBot was up to no good and Walter rounded the corner at the wrong time? Or maybe...yes, Pat?”

  “Maybe it’s a serial killer, sir,” Pat said. “I have seen a number of programs on the VizChannels lately that have been using that theme.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Dresker said almost patronizingly, “but wouldn’t there be more than one crushed Mechanican out there, Pat?”

  “Has to start somewhere.”

  “Right,” Dresker said with his eyebrows up. “Any other ideas, people?”

  “Contract,” Cleb said.

  “To kill a Mechanican?” Elwood said.

  “Never know,” Cleb replied with a shrug.

  “Interesting,” said Dresker and then he motioned to Cleb. “So, tell us what you and Pat found at the manufacturing building.”

  “We didn’t get much, sir,” Pat said before Cleb had a chance. “The guards were rather territorial about their break room and there was a guy at reception that considered me hot. Other than that, it was a wash.”

  “I see,” Dresker said with a grimace. “Cleb, how do you feel it went?”

  “Well, she’s about right. Dem guards didn’t have much to share. Dey didn’t know nufin’ about dat Walter guy, but dey did say a couple of interesting fings. First was dat dey escorted a bot out dis morning who got let go. Second, dat bot had a funny name. It were Bob Jones.”

  “Jones, eh? That is an odd name for a bot,” Dresker agreed. “Actually, for anyone. I wonder what species it stems from.”

  “Dunno,” said Cleb. “Makes it easier to find da guy, if we need to, doh. Also, dey said dat Bob Jones ain’t talked about no family or nuffin.”

  “I don’t see the relevance,” Elwood said.

  Cleb sniffed. “Dat’s what I fought, but dey fought it meant somefin’ so I’m just bringing it up.”

  “Must be something to it,” Dresker said.

  Little tells made all the difference sometimes, and these tells were only obvious to the people that saw the day-after-day consistencies of the psyche. It was a shame that they didn’t have any information on Walter Blitterbent, but he was confident that something would turn up soon. It always did.

  “Let’s not forget,” D
resker continued, “that we all get that cop’s gut feeling from time to time. They may not be in the IIB, but they still wear a CCOP badge and that means that they’re too smart to be in the Local Authority.”

  They all giggled at that while Dresker threw out the remainder of his drink. Once Carbenian’s left the perfectly-hot phase the bitterness was too much to handle. Some folks drank the stuff iced, but Dresker hadn’t quite the palate for that.

  “Truhbel found some interesting information too,” Dresker said, signaling to her, but she just waved back at him to share the information. Truhbel wasn’t one for giving presentations. “The video feed from this morning’s run was tampered with. It looked like a rush job. Some images were blurry, namely Walter’s, and everything else was clear.”

  “What was on the video?” Elwood said.

  Dresker put the video up and ran it in slow motion while he pointed with a laser device. “The editor tried to make it look like Walter was spit out of the Trash Compactor and landed a block away.”

  “Trash Compactors do not spit,” Elwood stated. “Even if they did, they wouldn’t have enough power to launch a Mechanican that far.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know how you know the potentiality for spitting distance of a Trash Compactor, Elwood, but either way, you’re right about the first part.” Dresker let the video loop while he continued, “And with your new data about the CrushBot being in the area, I think it’s clear on who crushed Walter Blitterbent. So that gives us the who, what, when, and where. Now we just need the why.”

  As soon as Dresker finished his sentence the world shook and he started to feel disoriented.

  “What in tarnation?” Hawkins shouted.

  “Dis ain’t good,” Cleb agreed.

  Dresker grabbed for his personal gravity device and thumbed it until the world righted itself again. Not everyone on the CCOP still carried one, though it was recommended. Good thing all of his agents did. It took a couple more microclicks for his stomach to catch up. All of a sudden those donuts seemed like even less of a good idea.

  By the time he looked up, everyone but Pat was back on the ground and looking a bit green. Pat seemed fine, even amused to a degree.