Starliner (The Intergalactic Investigation Bureau Book 1)

by John P. Logsdon

  The back door popped open and the manager bot came out and yipped something at the box pushers. Within microclicks they were scouring over the trash bin, barely allowing Cleb to escape their maniacal brushing and sweeping. A quick flash of flame evaporated the Roozer wrapper, the ash of which was scooped into one of the bot’s internal storage area. They scooted back from whence they came, but before they left one of them stopped and, much to Cleb’s surprise, beeped at him.

  “I can’t believe how realistic this dirt is,” Pat said as she approached the trashcan. “It just gets all over you.”

  “No, wait...”

  Too late. The bin was dirty again and Mr. Manager was squeaking at his minions to get it buffed out.

  “You might wanna get outta da way,” Cleb said to Pat.

  “Hey,” Pat said, pointing at the docks. “Isn’t that Lemoolie?”

  Cleb looked up and saw the door shutting in Lemoolie’s face. She stood there for a bit and then took the stairs to the left of the loading door.

  “What you doing out back here?” Lemoolie said as she dropped a scrap of paper into the dumpster.

  “Surveillance,” Pat answered.

  “What were you doing up der?” Cleb said.

  “Investigating der financials.”

  “I know dat, but I mean why you leave dat way?”

  The bots came zooming back toward the dumpster, pushing past Lemoolie in the process. She merely grimaced and shook her head. “Fings like dat happen to me all da time.”

  “TrashBots pushing you around?” Pat said.

  “No, being put out back doors and such,” Lemoolie replied as she looked back at the building. “I guess dat’s der way of getting me back for investigating dem.”

  “Sorry,” Pat said.

  “It not matter. Gonna go now. Keep looking at dem,” she said with a glance back at the building. “Makes dem mad.”

  TAX WRITE-OFFS

  SELBY GILBEHT WAS riffing about with the other reporters as Dresker watched the show, trying to keep up with how the reporters were spinning the latest stories.

  The news was doing everything they could to drag out the events at the Hub and they had even now paralleled Walter’s death as a possible connection. Captain Nedge from the Local Authority had already been interviewed twice and had even shown a copy of the “suicide note” that was found near Walter. By watching the feeds one would think that the news had nothing better to do than report on dramatic events. At the same time, the numbers reflected in the viewership, along with other statistics the news displayed in their footer, were close to reaching eight million, and almost one-third of that number was off-world.

  To Gilbeht’s credit, he seemed to have recovered from the complete meltdown he’d had earlier in the day when the gears had stopped. Now he was moving from reporter to reporter, gathering information, reciting their responses, often word for word, and even putting a bit of his own color commentary on top of it.

  Some of Gilbeht’s summations had almost made sense.

  It was scary.

  Dresker had just flipped off the VizChannels when Lemoolie plopped down in a chair in front of him. She was frowning, or so it looked. Hard to tell sometimes with Uknar, especially with a particular one named Lemoolie.

  “Didn’t go well?”

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “I never not find fings.”

  “Ah,” Dresker nodded understandingly.

  “Everyfing was paradisiacal,” she annunciated, “even down to da receipts for da building maintenance.”

  “I’m surprised that they have building maintenance.”

  “It’s all volunteer stuff.”

  “Then why are there receipts?”

  “Tax write-offs.”

  “I thought religions weren’t taxed?”

  “Dey aren’t.”

  “Oh.” Dresker was going to continue the line of questioning but it didn’t matter and it was clear that Lemoolie was bothered by something different.

  “Der has to be somefing dat I’m missing.”

  Dresker took a sip of his Carbenian’s. “I doubt it. You’re too sharp. It’s more likely that they’ve got nothing out of order. You have to remember that this is a building run by bots. It’s not like there are any other influences that could mess up their filings.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Another thing to consider,” he continued, “is that, as we decided before, they’re not a business...exactly. I mean, it is a religion, but, anyway...” He put his drink back down. “They have no need for business-style transactions, aside from rent.”

  “And maintenance.”

  “Yeah, that too. So, when you think about it, there’s not much you could have found. The point of you going there was to get under their skin...or metal, I suppose.”

  “I must have done dat okay,” she said as she got back up.

  “Oh?”

  “Dat Telian bot put me out da back entrance.”

  ON THE LEVEL

  IT WAS TELIAN’S turn to be the calm one because The Leader was furious when she walked into his office.

  She was so taken aback by his anger that it took her a moment to notice that Zimp was sitting in one of the chairs taking the brunt of The Leader’s rampage. The poor little IIB agent was getting an ear full, that was for sure.

  The Leader wasn’t yelling. That wasn’t his style. He did what he always did when his ire was up. He accentuated each word with a piercing note, followed by a plethora of synonyms, which, he had noted on a number of occasions, was more to ingrain than enforce his meaning.

  Telian could have come up with an equal number of thesaurus results for how agitating it was when The Leader was angry.

  “...meddling, troublesome, inconvenient, inhibiting, hampering...oh, hello, Telian,” The Leader said. “I was just explaining to our friend Zimp here how baffling it is to me how his beloved IIB is intolerably insistent on being discommodious.”

  Telian tapped on Zimp’s head, but only his eyes moved. She looked at The Leader who responded by showing her his makeshift remote unit.

  Cruel.

  “They are trying to short our circuits,” she said as she sat. Then she looked again a Zimp. “It seems that they are succeeding.”

  The Leader opened his iPane and flipped it around to show it to her. “Look at this,” he said hotly. “They’ve even got some lowly developer snooping on every move we make out to the Net.”

  Telian opened her VizScreen. “Is everyone aware of this?”

  “Apparently not,” The Leader said. “But word has gone out on all the internal relays. You should consider checking them from time to time, my second.”

  “I have been a little busy,” she snipped back.

  “I do wonder precisely what has kept you toiling?” The Leader jumped from his chair and pointed at Zimp. “As you can see, this little nuisance somehow found his way into my office. Now, as I recall from our earlier conversation, you were responsible for making sure that he would not be allowed to roam freely.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Further, the attention to detail that one must command in order to be the second to the highest ranking official in The Starliner needs to be impeccable. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I do, it’s just that—”

  “I have to be honest here, Telian,” The Leader said, walking back to his chair and dropping into it, “if I had known of all your shortcomings a year ago, I would have chosen better.”

  Telian was set to boil, but she caught herself before allowing things to escalate. There was very little time remaining before The Captain arrived and then things would change. For now, Telian must continue to play the game.

  “You are...correct. I will endeavor to be more thoughtful.”

  The Leader reclined and seemed to relax.

  Telian took a moment to run through all the threads and found that nearly everyone had been forewarned that there was an outside person trying to snoop on The Starliner’
s signals. She messaged all Mechanicans internally to take it upon themselves to make sure everyone was on board with the latest news and that everyone took extra care over the next day. Zimp was on the list as being one of the ones who had not responded, so she auto-checked his record to avoid any intrusions into The Leader’s office.

  That done, Telian closed her VizScreen and looked over the comatose IIB agent.

  Imprisoned the way he was had to have been traumatic. Poor fellow, she thought, and then remembered what he represented. Her logic paths moved from sympathy to “serves him right” arguments. Turning against your own kind in order to better your personal position was just downright wrong, whether you believed in a cause or not. Still, she couldn’t help thinking how incredible it would be if the lights were low, some soothing music was playing, and Zimp had been equipped with something similar to Bob’s upgraded assemblage.

  “So now we have another problem,” The Leader said, shocking Telian from her fantasy.

  It was often challenging being a SensualBot.

  “Yes?”

  “I was planning to launch a virus today that would do two things,” he said tersely. “First it would render all of the Mechanicans outside of The Starliner jovial.”

  “What do you mean by jovial?”

  “They’ll be happy, of course.”

  “I’m sure they’re already quite content as they are,” Telian said with the feeling that The Leader was stepping over some lines here. Some pretty big lines at that.

  “Indeed,” he said in a confused voice. “The point is that they will be hyper-happy. They will whistle and dance and everything.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Confusion of the main populace. Telian, you need to quit thinking in such a linear fashion.”

  Telian felt that the linear thinking was happening on the other side of the desk.

  The Captain could not possibly have approved such tinkering. The very idea of manipulating the underlying programming of any Mechanican was against everything that she had been taught at The Starliner. Doctrine or not, it was understood that no Mechanican should ever be subjected to even the most minor of changes without their consent. Sometimes a Mechanican would request a change due to a behavior or belief that they felt was not in line with what they wanted to be, but that was just normal rationalization of bettering oneself.

  “So you were planning to reprogram Mechanicans?” she asked with much contempt.

  “Are you questioning me yet again, Telian?” The Leader said while looking up at the ceiling. “I must say that this attitude of late is getting more than a bit tedious.”

  Telian squared her shoulders.

  “Leader,” she said, “I respect that you hold the position you have because The Captain saw you as the most qualified. But you must also accede that you made me your second in command and that puts the onus on me to bring things to your attention that I find questionable, much as my direct reports do to me.”

  The Leader sat still for a few moments and then he began tapping his fingers on the desk. Another very Human manifestation, thought Telian. They were becoming more consistent over the last few days.

  “Well said,” The Leader murmured. “And you are correct to question me when you feel something is awry. In this case, though, you have my assurance that everything is on the level.”

  He must have noted that she had not lowered the glow of her eyes, because he knocked on the table three times and then explained, “The virus was not intended to simply make our fellow Mechanicans jovial. That was just a small part of its job, intended, again, as a diversion. The root of the code was to allow me to inject commands as needed.”

  “Commands?”

  “Of course,” The Leader replied. “How else would I update their transponders and send a signal to have them all eject their batteries at the prescribed time?”

  “This is too much,” Telian said with a shake of her head. “I thought you were just sending information to them. Just information.”

  “And what exactly would that accomplish?”

  “The same thing it has with all the brethren who follow The Starliner.”

  “No, Telian,” The Leader said, looking down at his desk. “It would just raise questions.”

  “And those questions—”

  “Will be answered after they are off-world and safely away from here.” The Leader clasped his fingers together. “Open your mind, Telian. Allow logic to flow in. We have been recruiting for over a year and we have only scratched the surface at building our congregation. You know that using pamphlets and messages does nothing. One-to-one recruiting has been our only success path, and not doing that has resulted in high numbers. At current, our flock is less than ten percent of the entire Mechanican populace. Do you honestly think that is sufficient?”

  “I’d rather do things the right way.”

  “Oh, don’t be naive.”

  “You’ve destroyed two of our brethren already,” she said solemnly.

  “You were just as much involved with the deaths of Walter and Bob as I was. With Bob, even more so since I was nowhere near the area. So don’t lecture me about doing things the right way.” He paused. “Is it not sad that only a handful of us will attain exit from this wretched place while our Mechanican brothers are left behind?”

  “It is sad,” she agreed, and it was.

  The Captain wanted to liberate every Mechanican and give them a life of freedoms and joys that now only few would taste. Even this Zimp, had he not been negatively influenced by the CCOP and its holdings, would have joined her on the wonderful trek to the new world.

  “But, Leader or not,” she continued, “you don’t have the right to change Mechanicans against their will.”

  “It really doesn’t matter at this point,” The Leader said. “Even you must have surmised how much unwanted attention your recent antics have garnered. Due to your inability to keep dramatic events from impeding your every move, I now cannot release the virus into the mainstream, which makes your little tantrum rather moot at the moment.”

  “I—”

  “No need to say anything, Telian. You can explain your thoughts to The Captain when he wonders why the entirety of his people were unable to join him.”

  Telian didn’t argue.

  Whether a result of poor circumstance or utter carelessness, Telian had to admit that she was involved in the majority of flubs that had gotten the Internal Investigation Bureau breathing down their necks. She felt terrible about that, but not enough to agree with the tinkering that The Leader had planned.

  “Regardless,” The Leader said, “what’s done is done. The fact is that there are simply too many Mechanicans and too little time. Our methods of information dispersal have been less than...perfect.”

  She looked away. “We can still send a message to all our brothers and sisters to join us when The Captain arrives.”

  “No, Telian, we cannot.” The Leader tilted his head. “Everything that we do is being tracked. I see that as a problem, don’t you?”

  “No,” she pondered. “Not if you sent a burst along the channel and knocked the snoop’s connection out.”

  The Leader started to respond but then stopped. Yet another tidbit that he missed. Telian worried that the mass of data flowing at The Leader was causing him to make poor connections.

  “I suppose we could do that, yes,” he said. “I commend you for the thought, my second.”

  “Thank you. I was just—”

  “However, it won’t work.”

  “It won’t?”

  “No,” The Leader said, putting on his pedantic voice. “You see, if I send a burst then that burst will be traced...well, it doesn’t take a prototype Mechanican to surmise where it will be traced to.”

  Telian sank a little bit.

  She knew that he could merely send one of the agents out to hook into a terminal to send the burst or, for that matter, the virus. But there was no point in trying to argue any further. She�
��d already pushed as many of his buttons as she could today. Plus, once he got in one of these little debates he would twist and turn it in any way possible to come out on top. She often wondered how many times his being right got in the way of their progress.

  “Then how will we get the word out to them all?”

  “We can’t.”

  Telian realized they would be leaving the majority of the Mechanican population behind. It surely wasn’t what The Captain would want. “Could we at least send a signal as we are leaving that we could maybe come back for them one day?”

  “Well done, Telian,” The Leader said in a genuine tone. “That is already in my agenda to speak with The Captain about, once we’re safely on board and underway. But, for now,” The Leader said with a bit of grit as he typed on his iPane, “I will just have to erase this virus so that it doesn’t accidentally get...oh, no.”

  “What?”

  “I pressed the wrong option,” he said frantically.

  “What does that mean?” Telian asked, looking over at Zimp, whose eyes were shifting this way and that.

  The Leader mumbled something.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The virus...” He trailed off.

  “Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

  He deactivated his iPane and placed his head in his hands.

  “The virus,” he said, “was just released.”

  “What?” Telian said and then staggered to her feet. “You...you did that on purpose!”

  “I most certainly did not,” The Leader replied with a tinny voice, “and I do not care for your tone or your accusations, my second.”

  Telian just stared at him.

  She knew he always made these little faux pas. It was uncanny. But this...this had to have been on purpose. It was just far too large of an error to be trivialized. A thought hit her. “The IIB will be here any moment—”

  “Not tonight,” The Leader replied with a shake of his head, keeping the edge to his synthbox. “They’ll wait until morning. It will be all anyone can do to just comprehend the merriment of every Mechanican on the streets.”